An Abyssal's Dissent
by Fallstavia
Summary: Exalted 1e Abyssal story.  Warning: Long, a little sexual content and a lot of graphic violence and horrible things in general.  A story of the first Abyssal Exalt, what led him there, and what drives his Destiny to destroy Creation.
1. Chapter 1

**The 12th Day of Resplendent Wood, 602 in the Year of Our Empress.**

Being part of House Mnemon had its privileges and its obligations. For one of the bloodline, the obligations often outweighed the privileges, unless you saw eye to eye with the House founder. When you were the only child of Mnemon herself who hadn't Exalted before the age of 14, the all-consuming pressure to show his Blood outweighed all other considerations.

Mnemon Matthias was almost 17 and he felt every day of it like a stone, one piled on top of the other until a would-be Dragon-Blooded was crushed beneath the burden. Most mornings, he awoke out of breath from terrible nightmares. By most afternoons, he was exhausted by his personal regimen coupled with his extensive duties. Most evenings, it was all he could do to keep his eyes open but still he studied and practiced. When he slept at all, it was with fear of what he'd see in his dreams, a fear born out of another day's failure to Exalt.

It was early evening, just before dinner, and Matthias was just finishing cataloguing a recent acquisition of books to round out someone's collection in the House. His calligraphic High Realm filled several pages with his small, straight script. It lacked the ornamentation most students acquired but it was undeniably clear. He was a straightforward adolescent in all things, which was why he was trying to avoid thinking about his future.

Matthias was going to be married off. He didn't know that for certain, of course. The fact was, most of the people in his household didn't like him and didn't spare a word they didn't need to. No one had told him anything about what was to happen to him but Mnemon, if no one else, would eventually put him to use doing more than these odd jobs around the House.

It was only logical. He'd graduated from the Adamantium Coals of Ezerha, his Primary School, at the top of his class, beating out even the Dragon-Blooded students. He was one of Mnemon's own children, a grandson of the Scarlet Empress. Matthias might have failed his family already but he was still a resource for his mother.

"You're looking even more sour than usual, Matthias." The woman's voice turned his head and he looked down at his visitor. Of course, he tended to look down on everyone. He was the tallest man in his House and he was not even 17 yet.

"I didn't ask for your opinion," he said, with a dismissive lift of his eyebrows. His niece, Cora, was just a little younger than he was but her skin had already turned a light blue only a few years after her Exaltation. Great things were no doubt being planned for her but they, and she, had nothing to do with him.

"You don't need to bite my head off, just because you're sulking," she said, sounding sulky herself. "Grow up. It's not like you're going to be put out on the street."

"My future isn't any concern of yours," Matthias said sharply. "I'm busy. Go play with your latest boyfriend, whoever he is now." One of the burdens of living in a large House was the lack of privacy. Even in the library, he could count on being interrupted by an idle Dragon-Blooded his own age.

"I am. He's passed out though so I'm bored."

"Already?" Matthias glanced at the waterclock in the corner of the room and furrowed his brow disapprovingly. "It's not quite dinner time. You've picked another keeper, I see." His sarcasm was not lost on her and she planted her fists on her hips, fixing him with a glare that chilled his skin. Or maybe that was just the cold radiating from his incensed niece.

"He's a Cynis, what do you expect? At least he's got a future. Did you know Alaraj is being groomed to take over his grandfather's vineyards? It's an excellent asset to their House!"

"You're...dating Cynis Alaraj?"

Matthias' astonishment blackened at once into an utter loathing. Of all his classmates at the Adamantium Coals, no one offended him more than Alaraj. The oaf seemed to be interested in nothing but his own self-gratifying pleasure. Among the bottom of the class in every subject, Matthias would have had nothing to do with him if he hadn't roomed with him.

But then Alaraj had Exalted.

He still remembered coming home to his dormitory room, only to find Alaraj downing as much smuggled alcohol as he could to the cheers of other students. It had been some kind of wager. Already very, very drunk, it had been a miracle the Cynis hadn't poisoned himself with that much liquor. Matthias had tried to sleep in his corner bed until the shouts went up.

Never would he forget the hazy but visible lines of yellow diamonds that wreathed the oaf's body. Never would he forget the empty, vacant look in his eyes changing into the briefest moment of Exalted awareness. Never would he forget his absolute contempt when the first act of his roommate's new Dragon-Blooded life had been to finish the last bottle.

"He's handsome, gets drinks you wouldn't believe!" Cora giggled. "He's fun and talks. Completely unlike someone I know."

"Tell me, Cora...enlighten this stupid mortal." Matthias bared his anger and contempt, for he had nothing to gain by hiding it and little to risk losing. "How does someone like Alaraj represent spiritual perfection? Explain it to me. Am I supposed to...respect and obey someone whose only idea of leadership in the Realm is to drink more than anyone else?"

"Alaraj has depths you can't even imagine," Cora said nastily. "Obviously he does or the Dragons wouldn't have Chosen him. Obviously you don't or they would have Chosen you."

Mnemon Matthias went white as the cruel words hit home but his face was a mask of composure and control. He made fists with his hands. Then he managed a passably civil tone.

"I'm sorry, Cora. That was out of turn. I apologize."

"It's not to me you should be apologizing, Matthias," she snickered harshly. "I'll go rouse Alaraj and you can tell him yourself."

She sauntered out the door and Matthias turned his back, leaning heavily against the table. He was so tired. Martial Arts every morning, House work every day and further study into mathematics, history and the Immaculate Texts every night were taking their toll. And now humiliation would be heaped on top of him. Leaning on his hands, Matthias realized his arms were shaking and he couldn't stop them.

There was only so much a mortal body could withstand, no matter how jade-like the mind and will were.

He took a deep breath, then another, and then another as he realized he couldn't breathe. Matthias clenched his eyes shut tightly, trying to concentrate on keeping air in his lungs, but then dizziness seized him and he fell back, almost missing the chair behind him. He lay in the upholstery, gasping like a fish out of water, and trying not to waste what little air he could find by screaming.

He was so weak. How could he be so weak? He couldn't be found like this. Not by the one teenager he hated the most. Not by his ex-roommate, Cynis Alaraj.

"_**Drink this, it will help**_."

A cup of something hot was pressed to his lips and he drank it without looking. It wasn't that he was naive enough to innocently trust a cup pushed his way. Rather, he was too unimportant to kill off, Mnemon's son or not.

The bitter liquid squeezed his throat shut...and then it went down. He gagged, almost retched at the taste...but slowly he could breathe more easily. A leaf was pressed into his hand and Matthias opened his eyes to see his benefactor.

"_**Chew this. It's good for those with lungs like yours**_."

The woman before him was beautiful. She was veiled in a creamy leaf-green veil and her robes were just a shade lighter but he could still see beneath her garments that she was lovely. A cloak of raiton feathers hung from her shoulders, not at all fashionable in the Realm. Only someone with her looks could make it look anything other than bizarre.

"My lungs are fine. It's just...something that's been happening to me lately. This is a kind of mint, isn't it?" Matthias asked as he chewed slowly on the leaf. It was helping, or maybe it was that foul brew she'd passed him.

"_**A kind, yes**_." Her eyes were a gorgeous green. An unusual pattern of black specks crisscrossed her irises like latticework. And she was looking right at him, not ignoring him like all the others did.

"My name's Matthias. Honored to make your acquaintance, my Lady," he added hastily, remembering his manners. He pulled his shirt down, smoothing any wrinkles that might be on it. "Are you visiting House Mnemon?"

"_**Actually, I came to visit you**_."

Matthias, infatuated as he was, still had a mind. The corners of his eyelids creased as he took in the import of her words. Taking a deep breath, he stood back up. His legs were still a little shaky but the fit was passing. They always did ever since they started happening last year.

"I'm honored, my Lady, but I'm not certain why a visitor of your station would waste their time on an unExalted Dynast like myself. How can I be of service?"

"_**You're well mannered**_," the woman in green said, smiling in approval. "_**Intelligent. Quite pretty in your own way. Tall too, and you're not done growing, are you? You'll be a very tall man when you're full grown**_."

"Thank you, my Lady." Matthias folded his hands together to keep them from betraying his nervousness, for he still didn't know why she was even noticing him.

"_**You're a remarkable young man, whether your blood is awake or not**_." She moved at last, pulling a chair up before the one he stood before. Sitting, she leaned forward, close enough that he could touch her face with his fingers if he wanted to. "_**You're not like the others, are you? You're not a politician or a dilettante. You want Exaltation so you can use your gifts to better the Realm. Tell me the truth. What is that you really want**_?"

"More than anything?" he asked, wincing at how stupid he sounded. Mother had always told him that people who repeated themselves or others only diminished the importance of their every word. "I would join the Immaculate Order, my Lady."

"_**Would you now**_?" Her eyes seemed to glow in the soft candlelight, a green and black smudge of color just noticeably unnatural, if he'd had the presence of mind to notice. Right now, he didn't for she was suddenly the most irresistibly appealing woman he'd ever seen. Teenage crushes and fantasies fell aside as obsession claimed his mind, a driving need to have her transcending all other things. Almost.

"Yes," he gasped, despite how hard he was. "I want to make...the Realm better. The Dragon-Blooded better. The people are not faithful...not enough, even in my own House." He didn't know why he was telling a complete stranger this nor did he understand how he was able to profess his dreams even as he desperately wanted to do things with her that no Immaculate Monk would ever be permitted.

"_**Very good**_," she said, smiling just like a Professor who had seen a student pass a difficult test. Matthias took an easier breath as his lust faded, though it did not subside entirely. She was, after all, a very beautiful woman...but she'd used a Charm on him! She had to have! How...how could he have resisted her?

"My Lady, what's your name?"

"_**I don't have one anymore**_," she said distantly, as if remembering something from very long ago. "_**Nor will I ever again. I do bear title but it is not for you to know now. If you must have a name...why not Ya'moire? I was never her but I liked her name, a very long time ago**_."

"Why are you here?" It was bold but Matthias had had enough. He knew when he was out of his depth. Arrogance and intelligence had carried him far but he wasn't a match for a mystery like this one and he didn't want to wind up dead or disappeared...because right now he had the strange notion that she was part of the All-Seeing Eye and people who brushed up against them were never seen again.

"_**I'm here to see you, Matthias. I'm here to give you this**_."


	2. Chapter 2

Ya'moire drew a sheathed knife from the folds of the black cloak, as if the blade had been a feather on it, taken and made a weapon. She pulled the knife out of its sheath with a little difficulty and then placed it on the library table next to them. Matthias ran his fingers through his hair unconsciously as he looked at the blade. He'd never seen the metal before, nor heraldry as horrific as the handle bore. Screaming faces worked across the hilt and the pommel was a single enraged face, carved in intricate detail to show its all-consuming hate.

"Why?" he asked simply.

"_**Because Matthias...you will be the Fulcrum Hammer. I read the stars, you see. Certain stars. I've drawn your horoscope and I see very dark things in your near future. You could say it's meant to be...or you can say 'Thank you' for a gift that can turn your destiny aside**_."

"Thank you," he said awkwardly, still looking uncertainly at the knife. "I don't understand. Would you explain it to me?"

"_**You're a good student, Matthias**_," Ya'morie said and suddenly she looked as tired as he did. "_**But I haven't the time and you haven't the experience to understand yet. You won't remember this conversation anyway so don't worry about it. All you need to remember is that this blade can help you get what you want...if you have the wits to use it**_."

"What is it?" Matthias' fingers caressed the hilt with his snarling faces. He picked the weapon up and wondered at its weight. It wasn't jade but there weren't many materials that were as heavy as the Magical Materials. At least, to a mortal.

"_**That is a very rare device from the First Age. In its time, it was one of the Ghost Knives of Thiokol. Now...it, never common, is exceedingly rare**_." Ya'morie rubbed at the corners of her eyes with her gloved hands. She looked exhausted. Matthias sympathized.

"What does it do?" His curiosity had prompted his questions so far but, for the first time in many minutes, Matthias' attention sharpened. Why was a Dragon-Blooded, obviously using a false name, giving him an artifact? What kind of a plot was he getting involved in? There was certainly no other possible reason for her to come to a mortal except to make use of him somehow. Was she an adversary of Mnemon?

"_**For your purposes, it's very simple. If the wielder uses the Ghost Knife against an Exalt, it can draw on their Essence. Corrupt Anathema used to use it to restore their squandered strength in the First Age. It does have a little known-side effect though. When held in the hand of someone with dormant Terrestrial blood, it can awaken an Exaltation in them. It requires a great passion and a great deal of blood but the Exaltation of another might be used to wake your own, Matthias. If you have the courage for it**_."

Matthias held the blade up in hopes that a better angle to the candlelight might portray more detail. He'd never been very interested in magic but this was obviously something important. He couldn't afford to miss any detail if he was going to be enmeshed in something. Frustratingly, it didn't matter how he turned the weapon, it seemed perpetually cast in shadow.

"I don't know what kind of person you think I am, my Lady, but I'm not a murderer."

The doors slammed open abruptly, causing Matthias to conceal the dagger behind his back. It was a guilty reflex, which was funny since he hadn't done anything wrong. As it was, he needn't have bothered. The party that staggered into the library weren't sober enough to notice much of anything.

"Matthias!" It was Cynis Alaraj, along with a few of his old school friends. And Matthias' niece Cora, naturally. He looked at the drunken face of his enemy and he couldn't help but bare his teeth. A violent tempest of rage stormed over his soul and it took as much willpower to stay polite as it had to resist Ya'moire.

Speak of Ya'moire, where was she? She'd been standing next to him a second ago...

"Alaraj. I can truthfully say I never expected to see you here." Matthias spoke in low, measured tones but with an undercurrent of anger he hoped wasn't noticed. Regardless of his feelings, Cynis Alaraj was a Dragon-Blooded, he was not. This was Matthias' home but he owed the other teenager a certain respect.

"What's the matter with you?" Alaraj bellowed. "You know, I thought you got over your stupid jealousy by the time we graduated but then my girlfriend tells me you still don't respect me. What's wrong with you?" The handsome blonde boy was half a foot shorter than he was, and the adolescent was inebriated on top of it, but Matthias gave ground to him.

"Jealous? Of you? You have nothing I could want, Alaraj." Matthias moved around the table to put it between him but, for some reason, he didn't want to rein his tongue in like he should. The target revealed, all of his reservation fled away before the need to strike down the one person he hated more than anyone else.

"You're a drunken sot," Matthias continued. "When you say 'we graduated', you almost couldn't include yourself in that category, isn't that right? And it wasn't even the alcohol, it was your proximity to those two 'accidental' deaths. It's a good thing your mother bought them off or you'd still be in School. Or worse, not."

"What did you say!" Alaraj made it to the table and pounded the surface with his fist. Seen this close, the blonde, tanned former classmate's skin looked like it was covered in sand, as if he was perpetually just back from the beach. "Just because you were first in our class doesn't give you the right to show me disrespect. I'm a goddamn Prince of the Earth!"

"You're a pathetic excuse for one, you mean." Matthias relished the look of shock on his adversary's face and how his niece and the two friends of theirs gawked at him. All of these Dragon-Blooded, so utterly complacent in their superiority, they couldn't believe a mortal was talking back. "What good is your blood if you don't use it for good? Have you ever had a thought in your life that wasn't about you?"

"I'm going to...I'm going to kill you!" Alaraj roared, circling the table unsteadily. His friends and Cora went with him, which made the whole effort laughably easy to avoid. Mnemon Matthias looked down on them all, the one advantage he had, and sneered.

"Well, that's brilliant. Kill anyone who disagrees with you, just like the rumors said about you and those two back at the School. In a century, your families orchards are going to be ruined because you're too stupid to run a business. All your workers are going to be dead, thanks to your intolerance, and the slaves you can keep won't know or care what they're doing. To think I even slept in the same room with you. I should have smothered you before the Dragons Exalted a useless piece of garbage!"

"Get him!" Matthias didn't know if it was the contempt or the blasphemy that had finally set them off but Alaraj went up over the table and his friends went on either side. Right about then, Matthias realized how much trouble he was really in. Three Dragon-Blooded against...him.

Matthias backed off, tucking the sheathed dagger under his coat in the waistband of his pants. Then, he threw his arms out and assumed the basic form of the Five Dragons Fight as One style. He was only a mortal but his fists and feet were better than nothing. Using a knife would guarantee they beat him to death. If he was lucky, he'd only have trouble walking for a few days.

Drunk or not, they weren't entirely stupid. They rushed him together. Matthias held back, then threw himself to the side. He was tall, he had a long stride, and he covered a lot more ground than they expected him to. He rolled across the ground and came up outside of their ring.

The bookcases and chairs offered opportunities to break them up, to use the environment, but this was Mnemon's House library and she would strip the skin from his body if he actually damaged anything. So, when the came again, Matthias kicked Alaraj square in the stomach and promptly went down beneath the other two.

In a tangle of thrashing limbs, he fought tenaciously. There were two of them but they were drunk and in poor shape compared to his condition. Getting punched in the face was nothing new for him. He hit one in the throat and crashed his elbow into the temple of another and then he was up.

Right until Alaraj got back on his feet. The angry Dragon-Blooded grabbed a nearby chair and Matthias realized he was in trouble when a phantom nimbus of gemstones flickered around the wooden seat. Then, Alaraj hit him square in the chest and he blacked out.

Water hitting his face woke Matthias up. He blinked groggily, then cried out when someone hit him in the face. He tasted blood in his mouth before he realized this wasn't the first time they'd hit him.

It was raining over the Imperial City and they had a good view of the storm, as they were on top of the roof of the House Mnemon complex. Matthias was being held by two of the other Exalts and Alaraj stood before him, gloating. His ex-roommate had never seemed so angry, nor had their interactions ever been that hostile, but all pretense at politeness was over.

Alaraj wound up his fist and drove into Matthias' stomach. The punch folded him over but at least he was still breathing. Matthias groaned as another punch caught him across the face. Spitting out blood, he glared at his attacker hard enough to pause the drunken idiot.

"...that's right...beat up a son of Mnemon...on the roof of her own House...that'll look good when your...family hears about it." Matthias found each breath painful and there was a grinding in his chest where the chair had hit him. That wasn't good.

"Like she cares what happens to you," Alaraj sneered. Behind him, Cora hovered anxiously. Her cheeks were flushed with liquor and the rain but she did not look like she was having a good time. Good.

"...takes all of you...to fight me? ...tough guy...you'll wind up in...someone's song being that heroic. Come on...Alaraj. ...do you have the...guts to take me on by yourself?"

"Get out of here!" Alaraj demanded. He pushed his friends and Matthias dropped to the ground as they released him. "You too, Cora. I'll be down in a little bit. Don't worry, I'm not going to kill your brother. Just make sure he never steps out of his place again."

"Good, kick his ass!" Cora did not look like she was happy with it but Matthias knew what she was like. She either had to join in or step in. He wasn't surprised in the least at the choice she'd made.

Alaraj turned his back to him as he shouted incoherently after his friends. Matthias looked at him...and felt black rage rising, a hate so total that he'd never known its equal. He was surprised to find he'd pulled out the Ghost Knife of Thiokol but he didn't give a second thought to putting it away.

Cora and the two other Exalts went back to the trapdoor and headed inside to get out of the downpour. It left the two of them on the roof top alone. Matthias kept his weapon beneath his arm, trusting that Alaraj wouldn't notice it in the dark and rain.

"This is it, Matthias," the Cynis said, turning back around. There was no amusement on his face, just a besotted look of equally powerful hate. "I lied, you know. I am going to kill you. Oh, it's not my fault you slipped off the building after all. I'll even come to your funeral, maybe shed a tear for my poor former roommate. It's so unfair that you mortals are so fragile...but that's what happens when the ant tries to fight the boot that crushes it!"

"What's that?" Matthias said weakly when he saw the Dragon-Blooded Cynis slowly draw a knife from behind his back. He tried not to gawk. It wasn't that the both of them had had a knife behind their back...it was that the blade in Alaraj's hand could be a mirror of his own.

"It's a knife, who cares what it's called? I found it walled up behind my bed, can you believe it? And it's so strong, roomie. It pulls the Essence right out of someone. You know those two students who died? It wasn't the fall for Sesus Ayer or the potion mishap for Sesus Shola. It was this. Just the tiniest cut from it and it can pull the power of your blood out of you. Feels pretty damn good," Alaraj giggled wickedly. "I don't know what it'll do on a mortal...but I'm going to find out. Right before you take a little fall."

Alaraj bent down and hefted Matthias onto his shoulder, expecting him to be too badly hurt to put up much of a struggle. Sadly, that wasn't far from the truth. Only Matthias was in better shape than his enemy realized...and he had his own Ghost Knife.

With a savage scream, Matthias drove the evil-looking dagger into Alaraj's back. The Dragon-Blooded cried out and the heads on the handle cried out with him. Matthias' lips were drawn back to expose teeth and, without a thought of compassion, he twisted the blade, yanked viciously on it to open the wound wider.

They fell together, their tangled bodies hitting the roof...then slipping off of it. Pure concentrated fear blew his fury away and then the ground dropped on him.

Sometime later, Matthias woke on the grassy lawn of the House's gardens. He was surrounded by a ring of people...not the least of which was his mother, Mnemon, herself.

"What happened?" she said, her voice cutting across a murmuring from the crowd he hadn't even noticed he was hearing. "Matthias, what happened?"

"Alaraj...he tried to kill me." Matthias spoke softly, so not to damage his insides any further. It was a wonder he was even alive. Was he bleeding to death as they spoke?

"Why?" Mnemon asked.

"Because I didn't grovel at his feet. Because I didn't think a Mnemon should grovel before a Cynis in his own home, Exalted or not!" Matthias did his best to keep the anger from his voice and found it was surprisingly easier. The fall and the rain seemed to have dispelled most of that intense rage he'd felt all night. "He was an impious teenager, Mother, and I couldn't stand his blasphemy. I admit I should have been a little more even headed but it's not as if I tried to kill him!"

Try as he might, he couldn't feel the least bit guilty about how things had gone. Alaraj had been a waste of an Exaltation and the Dragons were better served by having their good names preserved from the scandal he'd certainly bring down on them. Yes, he'd had the Ghost Knife of Thiokol but he'd only used it in self-defense. Not like Alaraj who was going to murder him with his own Ghost Knife.

...the Ghost Knife...

Matthias turned his head to look...and found himself side by side with the corpse of his enemy. Eyes staring wide, Alaraj would never see anything ever again. He'd landed on his back and the fall had forced the dagger out through his chest. It was a shockingly gory sight and Matthias felt sick just having seen it.

"Then the Dragons favored the right child," Mnemon said. A peculiar light shone in her eyes. Matthias couldn't understand it, couldn't place it...until he realized it was pride. Pride? In him?

"I don't understand."

"Look."

Mnemon reached down and lifted his arm up. His hand was intact, if dirty, but it was the hazy yellow cloud of broken diamonds swarming around it that made him sit up straight. Matthias didn't even notice any pain, so shocked was he at the sight of the Anima display around him.

He'd Exalted! He...he was a Dragon-Blooded after all!

"The Immaculate Dragons witnessed what happened and they chose accordingly." Mnemon looked about at the other Mnemon family members here, as well as the few guests among them. No doubt, gossip of this would hit the streets tomorrow and Matthias realized how cunning his Mother really was. "I won't hold Cynis responsible but I trust the point has been made. Overstep your place, forget the lesson of the farmer's obligations to his flock, and the Dragons send a reminder. My son, Mnemon Matthias, is that reminder. Can any here dispute Pasiap's favor?"

More murmurs. But one by one, resolution crossed the faces of the witnesses. Matthias didn't blame them. He'd hated Alaraj for his obsession with selfish pleasure...and the Dragons had rewarded him for it!

Unless it really had been the knife...

"I am proud of you tonight, Matthias," Mnemon said, crouching down and helping him to his feet as the crowd began dispersing. "Perhaps Pasiap simply had plans for you and waited until His own time to show His will. Either way, you've done very well."

"Thank you, Mother," Matthias said, bowing. It didn't help that his shoulders were higher than Mnemon's head but he gave himself space to bow and made sure his head dipped lower than hers. No one showed a lack of respect to Mnemon.

"And we won't talk any further of how it happened...or of how he happened to wind up stabbed with a knife, where it came from or what any of his two friends and my granddaughter Cora have to say about what happened before. My favor overlooks such things."

The genuine smile that had been finding its way to his lips died where it stood and, instead, Matthias managed a tight quirking of the corners of his mouth. Oh yes, Mnemon had made herself quite clear. His value had increased...and she'd just guaranteed her control kept pace.

...so what. Tonight, he was a Prince of the Earth, thanks to that strange knife. Where had he gotten it from anyway?


	3. Chapter 3

**The 27th Day of Descending Earth, 762 in the Year of Our Empress**.

"Do you regret any of it?" Ledaal Vira asked.

"I regret I was caught," Mnemon Matthias answered coldly. "I do not regret what you call a crime."

The procession moved with all due respect and speed, as was befitting its nature. Many large banners inscribed with holy writings were liberally waved in ritualistic fashion. Small bowls of incense burned perpetually in swaying censors. The Immaculate Monks who made up the procession's members were artfully garbed in fine robes, giving the parade the appearance of a stately Immaculate function.

There were many reasons why it was not.

"Do you truly believe that murder is justified by an individual's worth?" Ledaal Vira asked.

"If a riot happened in the Imperial City, made up of either peasants or patricians, do you think the Black Helms would react the same way?" Mnemon Matthias retorted.

To begin with, this procession was not twining its way through the crowded streets of the Imperial City but instead in the last legs of its journey into the Deep South. Now many weeks from Paragon, the land had fallen away to little but endless sand and burning sun. There were no crowds to witness its passage.

Secondly, this procession had been traveling with deliberate purpose for months now, something never before done in the living memory of any of the monks in it. It would be months before they returned to the Blessed Isle, yet not one would complain even if the Order had permitted it. Every man and woman here counted themselves highly esteemed by the Dragons to be a witness to what was to come.

"The Parable of the Fox teaches us that reaching beyond our place leads to disaster, for ourselves and for the community we live in." Ledaal Vira looked as peaceable as she had when Matthias had studied from her in his youth.

"The Parable of the Babbling Fool teaches us that no one is exempt from responsibility, for their own choices or those that affect others. It was true for him as it is for me." Mnemon Matthias looked much the same, for he'd had a century and a half to learn his teacher's discipline.

This procession carried with it a burden. This was not the body of a faithful monk being laid to rest, perhaps a Fire-Aspect who might have wished his ashes scattered out here. Instead, they brought with them the Heretic.

The giant of a man who now bore that name was striking to look at. He was thickly built with muscle, for he had been a follower of the Earth Dragon Style. He stood more than a head and shoulders over the tallest men here and, bound as he was with holy jade chains, he was unbowed by their unattuned weight. No longer permitted to wear the robes of the Immaculate Order and clad only in a worn pair of rough breeches, his once-fair skin had burned, then bronzed beneath so much sun.

"What you did was not the way of Pasiap," Ledaal Vira said with certainty.

"What I did was immeasurably better than what that fool would have done."

The Heretic had been denied the bronze razor and coal-black hair now lay evenly across his head. His eyes were a light gray, the color of a day thinking of rain but wishing for sunlight. And while he had been stripped of every vestige of the Immaculate Order, he wore the same sober expression shared by every other Monk, the same way of moving, and the same inexorable patience.

In time, the lead monk stopped. The procession formed up around her, splitting in half like water diverting around a river stone. In the midst of the procession's end, the monk stood alone.

The Heretic came last and stood before his teacher.

He did not avert his eyes before the empty expressions of those who had once been his peers. He was unafraid, as steadfast as Pasiap, and he went to his knees before the head monk because he knew what was expected and he'd built his life around service.

"Mnemon Matthias, you have been brought here to die," Ledaal Vira intoned.

The Immaculate Priest looked down at him with hardened eyes. She had known him his entire life but whatever compassion she felt for him was not enough to turn her judgment aside. Nor the judgment of the Dragons. How heavy was the sin on his soul?

"Mnemon Matthias, you were found guilty of the murder of a Dragon-Blooded member of House Cynis as well as guilty of stealing his Exaltation for yourself. This heinous deed is exacerbated by your life-long commitment to the Immaculate Order and that status in no way mitigates the severity of this crime, nor does your long service to our Order."

Matthias met her eyes with perfect composure.

"Your sin remained concealed for a century and a half. At any time, you could have confessed what you had done. For someone as versed in the Scriptures as you are, you had the obligation to do so and yet you did not. Your crime would never have been discovered if you had not failed to master the Earth Dragon Style."

All of this had naturally been brought out during his trial on the Blessed Isle. Matthias knew this summation of his past to be part of the pageantry of this little ritual. Never mind how ridiculous making a ritual of this was, given that it had never happened before in the history of the Realm.

"Your stolen Exaltation was inadequate to the task of channeling your Form's highest Charm. Again, you were given a chance to confess even at discovery by your peers. Yet you did not. You fled your cloister and eluded your pursuers for 12 years. Only when the Wyld Hunt brought you down did you at last admit your guilt."

Matthias remembered the Wyld Hunt and its devilish leader, the man with purple eyes who could not be tricked. He remembered the ashy taste of defeat in his mouth when they circled him and struck him down. Most of all, Matthias remembered the Ghost Knife of Thiokol.

"For your sins, you have been sentenced. Firstly, your Exaltation is to be stripped from you." Ledaal Vira almost looked like she was going to smile. "This, of course, was done on the Blessed Isle in recognition of your extraordinary abilities at evasion, in case you escaped us on the journey here. The Holy Knife of Mela severed you from what was not rightfully yours."

They called it the Holy Knife but Matthias knew it by another name. Even now, he couldn't remember how he'd gotten his hands on it but the Ghost Knife of Thiokol had changed his life so long ago.

"Secondly, you are to be brought from the Blessed Isle so that no trace of you will remain to defile our holy land. So terrible are your crimes that the Scarlet Empress herself ordered your name struck from all records. With the sole exception of this ceremony, thereafter you will be known only as the Heretic. No plaque will be added to your family's shrine and Mnemon personally erased your name from her House's records."

"You are banished from the Blessed Isle for all time. Your crimes are so serious that the highest Priests of the Order have joined their prayers to the Empress to ask the Immaculate Dragons to never allow your soul rebirth on the Blessed Isle. May this condemnation remain upon you everlastingly."

Matthias could not hold his eyes up beneath that judgment. Of all the things they had done and would do to him, this was the one that mattered the most. A cold winter settled into his soul, despite the fiery heat of the South. No matter his fate, he had been doomed. Mnemon Matthias, the Heretic, was already as good as forever dead beneath that pronouncement.

"Thirdly, you are to be left here in the South, in an empty wasteland where you will be unable to harm anyone. May your bones turn to sand in time and may you never receive shelter no matter where you go."

His head bowed, Matthias fought for breath. In a time so far removed from now he could scarcely recall it, he had struggled for breath like this. The fits that had come upon him that last year of mortality...yes, he couldn't seem...to quite...catch his breath.

Matthias closed his eyes tightly and concentrated on taking one breath after another. With the discipline of a life long Monk, he ignored his body's pleading to gasp frantically. It had done him no good when he'd been a boy and it wouldn't serve any purpose now except to diminish the vestiges of dignity he had left.

"Fourthly...Mnemon Matthias, you took it upon yourself to take the Exaltation from another Exalt deserving of it. Your hands stole Pasiap's gift from Cynis Alaraj."

Lifting his head, Matthias met Ledaal Vira's eyes once more, steeling himself to keep breathing. This wasn't part of the speech he'd heard back on the Blessed Isle. Was this something his teacher had been saving for him? Or was she improvising, adding her own punishment because the Heretic was one of her own?

What did it matter? He was damned. Nothing she could add would make the slightest difference.

"For your crime, for stealing from the Immaculate Dragons themselves, your hands will be severed. You will never again to reach for what does not belong to you."

Matthias' eyes opened wide at the sentence. Powerful hands grabbed him from behind, unnecessarily rough. He did not struggle. Whatever these Monks thought or felt, let all who asked know that the Heretic met his sentence without wavering.

"The judgment of the Immaculate Dragons is completed, Mnemon Matthias. You have been stripped of your name, your stolen Exaltation, your honors in the Order, your homeland and shortly your hands. Go forth and die, Heretic, or not. You are damned either way."

At that, the Priest turned her back. Mnemon Matthias stared at the robed figure facing away. He did not take his eyes off of her when they set his hands on a large block of wood, nor did he bother to pull away when they brought out the great two-handed sword. Untied, he met their judgment with all the force of his will and he grinned slightly as several looked away.

The great sword came down and Matthias felt only cold for a moment before the pain began. The sweat on him thickened, dripping freely from his hair now, but his face betrayed neither inkling of his pain nor any sign of his fear. They took the block away and a Monk thoughtfully bound his wrists to staunch the bleeding.

Then, one by one, they assembled back into the procession that had brought him here. Moving with greater dispatch than they'd displayed getting here, the Monks of the Immaculate Order began their journey north. Back to the Blessed Isle. Not one looked behind him or her.

Only Ledaal Vira remained. When the last Monk had left their line of sight, she slowly pivoted to face him.

"Staying to watch me die, Vira?" Matthias said harshly.

"Yes," she answered. A cold fire burned in her eyes, chilling despite the desert's heat. "Someone should chronicle the fate of the Heretic and I...I am old, Heretic. I may not look it but it will not be long before I join Pasiap. I would have a full reckoning for Him when He asks me how I failed."

"Fine. But I'm not going to sit here until I die."

The hot sun beat down upon him, like the punishing eye of the Anathema. He remembered the one Anathema he'd seen during his brief tenure with the Wyld Hunt. They had crossed blows and Mnemon Matthias might have fallen if the other Shikari hadn't arrived. He'd struck the killing blow and watched the sunlight fade from the monster's body.

Was the misguided God of the Sun punishing him now for an act against an Anathema so many years ago?

Mnemon Matthias began walking, followed at a short distance by his teacher.

To the far east lay mountains. They were the only geographical feature on this featureless sea of sand so he walked toward them. Hours passed without speech. The sun set and night sprang up but neither faltered. Mnemon Matthias refused to rest and Ledaal Vira did not need to.

When the sun rose, he grew tired and slept in the sands. When he awoke, fever was upon him and his wrists were as red as Fire-Aspected jade. Still, he rose unsteadily and went on his way, knowing Ledaal Vira would follow him.

"You will not survive to those mountains," she said. "No mortal could. Even a Fire-Aspect would not make this journey lightly."

"I don't make it lightly," Matthias grated. "I make it because I must. I will not die until death itself takes the choice from me."

"I would expect you to seek your death, Heretic." Ledaal Vira's voice, long familiar, was long absent in warmth but at least she didn't sound flat with anger as she had for months now. "Because your soul can never be reborn on the Blessed Isle does not mean there is no rebirth for you."

"A rebirth to what?" Matthias laughed. "To an animal's life again? Even if I eventually found my way to a mortal's life, Vira, without a birth on the Blessed Isle, my soul can never join the Dragons. I am trapped in Creation...for all of eternity. Eternity, Vira. It doesn't matter if I live or die right now so I choose to live. At least in this life I can remember when I wasn't damned."

"You always were a good student," Vira said, sounding a little sad. The Earth-Aspected woman was rather pretty, even if her head barely reached his chest. The polished white marble-like complexion of her face looked as mortal as he'd ever seen her. But how often had he ever seen her display any emotion?

The day passed on into night again and Mnemon Matthias knew he would not survive another day. His body was wracked with chills and burning flushes that might have been hot sweats a day ago. As it was, he had no water and only the trained endurance and steadfastness of the Immaculates kept him on his feet.

On and on Matthias walked. The mountains were concealed beneath the moonless night but he trusted he was heading in the right direction. A deep and terrible sickness rising in him warned that he would never even reach their foothills. Still he pressed on and Ledaal Vira pressed on with him.

At some point before dawn, a marrow-deep frost settled into his bones. Though his flesh burned around it, the ice in his interior only grew. When it became light enough to see, Matthias refused to look to look at the stumps where his hands had been. It would not do him any good now to add weight to his burdened soul.

Strangely, the heat of the day was slower to rise. The sun wasn't so bright this morning and it looked sullen and resentful behind a cloudy sky. Clouds in the desert, imagine that. The sands looked strangely like ash and the mountains far ahead of him looked curiously different. Maybe that was just because of how much distance he'd covered.

"Something's wrong," Vira said, glancing about nervously. Nervous? Her?

"What could be wrong?" Matthias chuckled. Then he stumbled and fell. It was a clumsy accident and one that annoyed him. But when he realized he couldn't get back up, it became a great deal more worrisome.

"_**You'll be dead within the hour**_."


	4. Chapter 4

"_**You'll be dead within the hour**_."

The voice was not Vira's and it made her turn around in surprise. Neither could see anything, that was plain to Matthias.

"Probably," he said agreeably to the air. Ledaal Vira frowned at him and he shrugged. He was dead. What did it matter?

"_**No, not even an hour. I've seen millions of men pushed to their limits and you've pushed past yours, even if you weren't fighting an infection. You'll be dead in minutes**_."

"Thanks," Matthias said to the voice that came from somewhere over to his right.

"Heretic, I have journeyed with you this far...but do not go toward those mountains." Ledaal Vira was worried, she wasn't even bothering to hide it. That glossy white face, framed by hair like oricalcum, was tense with concentration. "Something's wrong here, I feel it. Don't you? What's more, I do not think this is a God playing with us. I think we're in a much worse place."

Matthias lay in the cool sand. It felt so comfortable, he just wanted to lie there until there was no more need to ever stand again.

...No, he wasn't done yet.

Matthias propped himself up on his elbows, the agony nearly causing him to black out. Inch by inch, he got his boots back under him and then he was standing again. He tried to brush the sand off his robe but only spread dried gore across his front. His stumps really did look bad but at least he wasn't bleeding anymore. Not enough water left in his blood for that.

"_**Minutes**_," the voice repeated.

"If you say so," Matthias said, setting out toward the mountains again. His pace was slower by necessity. He didn't feel well. No, actually, he didn't feel much of anything anymore.

"_**How much do you want to live**_?" The voice was a deep baritone that resonated with unearthly power. Probably Pasiap. Wait a minute, why would his Immaculate Dragon be talking to the Heretic? But who else would?

"I don't," Mnemon Matthias replied thickly. His tongue had swollen a while back and speaking was difficult. He did it anyway. "I don't deserve to. Don't you know I'm the Heretic?"

"_**Your religion ousts you and you want to die? Pathetic**_." The contempt in the voice gave him the impression it wasn't Pasiap after all.

"The way of the Immaculate is truth!" Ledaal Vira insisted, though she was doing no better than he was at seeing the source of the speaker. "You only compound your heresy by consorting with this dark power, student!" She glared at him. She was so passionate, so alive with the Way. He remembered what it felt like to feel that way. Mostly, he wished he still did.

"I had it coming," Matthias said, speaking to the voice. It wasn't like you could add any severity to an eternal sentence. "When I was a boy, I killed a Dragon-Blooded for his Anima. I stole it so I could Exalt. I took what should only have been given."

"_**Not so pathetic after all**_," the voice chuckled approvingly. "_**What was your victim doing with his Exaltation**_?"

"Wasting it by drinking," Matthias said sourly, the bitterness still fresh in his mind after all these years. He felt that lingering resentment that rose because he'd had to take his Exaltation, that it hadn't been given to him as it should have been.

"He would have done great things in time," Ledaal Vira spoke up. "His soul was receiving its reward for a hundred lifetimes of right conduct. Who are you to judge it?"

"_**You did the world a favor, Heretic**_," the voice sneered. "_**Damaged as you are, I can see you were a competent warrior and the fact that you were able to get back on your feet impresses me. You're a huge man and you've clearly taken advantage of your size in your training, I can see the signs of it all over. You deserved that Exaltation, and greater glory than that besides.**_"

"I don't need glory," Mnemon Matthias croaked, his throat beginning to seal shut from a lack of moisture. "All I wanted was to please my family and honor the Immaculate Dragon of Earth. I suppose that was too much to ask for."

Somewhere in the distance, Matthias heard a growing clamor. It sounded like the training yards of the cloisters but he couldn't see anything past the immediate sand dunes. On and on he walked, the voice his only companion.

"_**Do you think your life has to end here? I'm offering you power, Monk. I'm offering you the chance for glory, whether you've sought it before or not. I'm offering to make you a God.**_"

"I'm not worthy," Matthias said, shaking his head.

"_**Because men tell you so? Because their books tell you what to think? Perhaps you've even had a vision of your Elemental Dragon...but who is He to say what death truly is? There is a difference between Heaven and Earth. The first is always greater and your Pasiap, mighty as he is, can only ever be of the Earth**_."

"You're blaspheming!" Vira's voice cracked like a whip, cutting across the distant but growing sound. Perhaps just up that last sand dune right before him. Every step was agony but Matthias continued undaunted.

"_**Against who? Against what? Soon Pasiap Himself won't be able to stop me, Monk. And unlike the Dragon, I Exalt the worthy. I would give you what you deserve, Heretic. I would bless you as you should have been blessed**_."

"What are...you saying?" Matthias was weary, ever so weary, but he was almost to the top.

"_**That your loyalty to your Pasiap is futile. What did He ever do for you? To say he abandoned you is not even doing it justice...because He was never with you to begin with, was He? You have the potential for greatness, Heretic, and He chose to make you a slave in this life. You worship Him but He doesn't listen to you. He's never listened to you. Can you tell me of even one occasion where He's spoken to you? Can you, Heretic?**_"

Matthias couldn't manage a reply and not entirely because of the philosophical point. Pain was beginning to blossom inside the wintery cold of his bones. He was very nearly done.

"He was impure, unworthy! He stole his Exaltation, Spirit! And you usurp the will of Heaven by pressing this matter. Begone or you will see why the Immaculate Order is renowned for its spirit mastery!" Vira didn't want to be here anymore and it would have made Matthias laugh, had he the energy to spare for it. And yet, she was still here. His teacher was twice his age, nearly three centuries old. Nervous or not, she would not run. That was Ledaal Vira.

"_**Show me your heart, Monk**_," demanded the dark, deep voice. "_**The living betrayed you. Your Gods denied you. You're going to die. How do you feel**_?"

"Angry," Matthias mumbled past his swollen, dry mouth.

"_**Good. What else**_?"

"Betrayed," he whispered, exposing the secret truth of his soul, a spiteful pride that he'd striven for a century to master. The nagging doubt grew faster than bamboo, now that he had spoken it. "All I ever wanted to do was serve Pasiap. But He picked a drunk instead. I did better than Cynis Alaraj would have. I...proved that over a lifetime of service!" Black hate gave him the final strength to make the last few steps up the dune while lending clarity to his speech.

"Falsely," Ledaal Vira said quietly at his side. "Dishonestly. Service with blood on your hands."

"_**Your Immaculate Dragon made a mistake**_," the voice said. "_**Don't argue with me, you know in your heart it's true. You're damned for proving them wrong. I know what it is to be punished for being right. Only too well**_." The bitterness in that unearthly voice was greater than Matthias' own.

"Great Pasiap, Shelterer and Teacher, have mercy!" Vira gasped in shock.

"Who...are you?" Matthias asked as he looked out from the top of the dune. Below him, an impossible sight filled the landscape. Matthias fell to his knees, no longer strong enough to stand, but he couldn't close his eyes if he wanted to.

The sand dune he knelt on was the last one before miles of open desert leading to the mountains. Soldiers marched across those sands, endless waves of soldiers. Regiments carried swords and pikes, others moved in mounted formations, and there were more of them than any army he'd ever seen. As far as his sight went, Matthias could not see their entirety.

And they were dead.

Skeletons marched in those ranks, zombies held those pikes. Dark ghostly beings walked among them, some in formation and some leading regiments as commanders. Ebony horses and stranger, more unearthly things served as mounts to figures wreathed in blackened armor. It was a scene from a nightmare.

The truth was obvious. Malias had already died somewhere back there and this was the punishment the Dragons had laid up for him. An entire army, solely for his destruction. As if dying itself hadn't been painful enough. At least, the agony was beginning to fade. So was everything else, for that matter.

"_**I am your savior, Monk. I am your master. I am the one giving you your revenge. You championed your religion but were thrown aside? I offer you a new religion. You fought for the people who betrayed you? I give you a new people whose loyalty is without question. They would call you a heretic? I will give you a new name, befitting the one I've been waiting for**_."

"You've been waiting for me?" Mathias croaked miserably. Even his knees could no longer hold him and his body fell to the sand. He lay there a moment, resting, then tried to rise again. He couldn't.

"_**For someone like you, yes. I prefer my own soldiers ordinarily...but the darkness of your soul drew me. The Judgment of Heaven is upon you...and any man who has earned that much disfavor must be accomplished...isn't that right, Mnemon Matthias**_?"

At last, Matthias turned toward the source of that voice and he was honestly surprised to find someone there. And what a person, if the word could be used. Matthias was one of the tallest men in the Realm, on par with the Legion of Silence, but this man towered over him.

Blackened soulsteel plates covered him head to toe and Matthias swore he could see bolts, as if the armor had been affixed directly on the man's bones. Chains of soulsteel dripped from him like water and pooled behind him. Two scores of children followed the giant, bound to him by more chains, though a seething hate in their eyes for all things warned him that they were not what they seemed.

From his belt, seven skulls hung down close to his knees, chained to his waist. And buried blade-down in the sand was the biggest Daiklave that Matthias had ever even heard of.

"Pasiap...what are you?" he asked. Dizziness assailed him and Matthias could no longer even keep his head up. As his cheek touched the sand, he felt an inexorable pull drawing upon him. It felt like a current of water, only it wasn't pushing on his flesh. It would have been sweet mercy to simply let go and let the current carry him off.

"_**Not yet**_!" the source of the voice snarled. Soulsteel chains rattled, plates clanged, and a cacophony of shrieking metal accompanied the vigorous gesture of negation. It was as if the figure only made sound when someone looked at him. "_**You can die when I say you can die. Matthias...don't be a fool. If you let go...they win. Pasiap wins. He'll laugh, Matthias. 'One more would-be Dragon-Blooded crushed to amuse me.' Oh yes, the Gods find the lives of mortals almost too boring to even look at...but killing you, crushing you never fails to please them**_."

"You...lie," Matthias whispered. But the man wasn't lying. His whole life had been a mockery of Pasiap's harmony and his failure to complete the Earth Dragon Style was proof of that. The Immaculate Dragon had rejected him. It seemed Pasiap really did favor a drunk over a devout Monk.

"You die!" Ledaal Vira shouted. She slammed her heel against the sand. Matthias fell down the side of the moving slope as it ripped open in a wave toward the giant man in mail. He rolled and was glad to land on his back. He wouldn't have been able to breathe if he'd landed on his stomach and he was too weak to move anymore.

Looking up the side of the slope, Matthias...couldn't see Vira anymore. The warlord in armor turned toward him, the only one standing up there, and began walking down toward him.

"_**I am the First and Forsaken Lion, Matthias. So I know something about forsaking. I found the will to endure and prosper despite it. Join me and prosper with me.**_"

Rage flared inside his dying body. Matthias ground his teeth at the slow, low chuckle that emanated from that horrible armor. He made tight fists of his hands before he realized he didn't have them anymore. They'd taken his hands! All those years of faithful service and they'd had taken his life, his soul, and his hands! His hands...

"But...my hands..." Matthias groaned. Even if Pasiap's Exaltation returned to him, he would be maimed for life.

"_**Do you not know you stand in the Underworld even now? You walked into it last night, you stupid fool! This is MY domain and here I am the Deliberative! Your soul will join my army one way or another and the Legion Sanguinary always needs more troops. But, if you take your place at my side, you will find honor. Glory. Meaning. And yes, I can replace your hands, Matthias. All that you lost will be returned to you...all that and more**_."

"Yes." At first, Matthias didn't realize that he'd said it, so close to death was he. But the current slackened against him and he found the strength to speak again. "Yes! If the Realm, if my own grandmother can abandon me to die like a dog in the desert...yes, I'll join you. Give me my revenge, Lion, and give me my hands and I am your man."

"_**Yesssss**_," the First and Forsaken Lion hissed, the sound of it piercing like jagged metal against slate.

At once, the current stopped. The pain stopped. The unnatural cold and heat stopped.

Then color seemed to return to the world.

The dismal grays, the biting bleakness of the Underworld changed before Matthias' eyes, becoming a paradisiacal ocean of beautiful sand and sky. He realized that the washed-out color of the world hadn't grown more vibrant. But it had grown more real, more natural.

He felt it creep inside his heart, settle into his blood, and make him part of this place inch by tortured inch. A cold unnatural wind pieced his skin and the dying fever, cut even through the frost and the pain of his bones and filled him up until there was nothing but the cold of the Underworld.

The Lion had promised him glory and Matthias felt the first vestiges of it when the swell of Essence opened his inner sight again. Somewhere in his soul, a Black Exaltation awakened him. It was a magnificent power, so pure and free of elemental constraint.

It was small compared to what he had been accustomed to...but it would grow again. He would grow and become so much greater than the Realm could believe. With this power...Matthias realized he would eventually bring down all of his judges, for nothing could withstand this might.

"_**Welcome to my Empire, my little Day Caste**_." The First and Forsaken Lion straightened and looked over Matthias' head. "_**So the Resplendent Hammer of Execution flies again**_." Matthias looked above him and saw a tremendous hammer, black and gray and spinning end over end. "_**No longer will your Anima wear that name, nor will you keep the name of who you were. You are my Abyssal and you possess the shard of the Descendent Hammer of Finality. Come**_."

Matthias found he could stand, so he did so. His hands ached dully but it was not the pain it had been. Even the infection seemed to have halted in its tracks. Around him burned a blackish light shot through with a poisonous green. Was he dead?

"_**You have much to learn, Abyssal. In two weeks time...you will meet my Masters and yours, for They are unusually eager to meet you. Be swift to learn the rituals I will teach you...or suffer a fate far worse than mine**_."

With those ominous words, the soulsteel monstrosity walked past him toward his army. Matthias fell in beside him. What else was there to do?

"What about Vira?" he asked, wondering if he was condemning her to death. The First and Forsaken Lion seemed to have forgotten about her. But the slow shaking of the helmet told him otherwise.

"_**Do not concern yourself with your Vira, Abyssal. From now on, your destiny is joined with mine**_."

Somewhere inside, Matthias knew he had just damned himself. But he was the Heretic, like Vira had said. In the end, he was damned either way.


	5. Chapter 5

**The 13th Day of Ascending Wood, 762 in the Year of Our Empress**.

In the Southwest of the Underworld lay the Thousand. It was an entire mountain-range carved into the personal fortress of the Deathlord the First and Forsaken Lion and it brimmed with soldiers. Its vast caverns held barracks large enough to house the whole population of Chirasciro, the Lap and Paragon put together. A wise explorer could find long-forgotten libraries, secret treasure vaults, armories of rare weapons and stranger wonders lost to this Age.

If someone brave penetrated deep enough into the Thousand, they would also find prisons and torture chambers.

There was one such room further down than the others. It was reserved for the First and Forsaken Lion's special pleasure. Victims rarely survived, for the Lion was too brutal for the usual subtitles of torture. On this specific day, it held only one occupant, living or otherwise, and the prisoner fervently wished it were otherwise.

"_**You do not look well**_."

The speaker was outside the cell and Mnemon Matthias could not make her out. Too tall for the chains that bound him to the floor, the ex-Earth Immaculate was forced to kneel and he couldn't see through the iron slit on the door. Instead, he coughed up more blood and gathered his breath.

"I'm not," Matthias answered cautiously. The voice from outside his doors sounded concerned. The mere presence of interest in his welfare was a stark contrast from all he'd experienced in the last week. It set him on edge to hear compassion, here in a place the First and Forsaken Lion had forged into the epitome of its absence.

"_**May I enter**_?" The speaker was a woman, that much he could tell from the timbre.

"I am hardly the master here," Matthias laughed roughly, which promptly triggered a coughing fit that left more blood on the floor. He didn't look at his body, at what the Lion had done to him in anger. It was enough to live in it right now.

"_**Thank you**_," the voice said, clearly taking his words as consent.

The most magnificent creature he'd ever seen swept into the torture cell. Her dress was a creamy green that glistened wetly in the watered-down light of the Underworld. A cloak of black feathers draped her shoulders and she seemed to fly like a bird as she neared him. In fact...her feet were not touching the ground...

Matthias straightened despite the pain. Her wide, sorrow-filled eyes were a green-gold crisscrossed with black stripes. Her white skin was finer than the best Dynastic china and she was every inch Mnemon's equal in command, presence and regality. If only she didn't look so sad.

"...my Lady," Matthias said, clumsy and wincing at his poor manners. "I'm Mnemon Matthias. I would be of service to you, if I were able to serve anyone." He smirked bitterly at his condition and dropped his eyes from her loveliness.

"_**Matthias**_," she breathed, as if pronouncing his name would invoke some kind of magical power. _**"Not for long, I think. Tell me, Matthias. Is it true you defied the First and Forsaken Lion**_?"

"It's true," Matthias said grimly. "He demanded I learn and perform these...rituals for a meeting with his masters. But I've been a scholar as well as a priest for more than a century, my Lady. I know Old Realm, even in that distorted form. If I do those rituals, I'm as good as pledging my soul to his masters for all time."

"_**Does the Resplendent Hammer of Execution fear for his soul**_?" Her eyes lit with inhuman intensity, with a hunger that made him think of the stories of the Fair Folk.

"It's the Descendent Hammer of Finality now." Matthias looked above his head where the hammer had once floated. The symbol had seemed right to him, fitting. But apparently the price was all his rebirths. "And yes, I fear for it. It's damned enough but at least it's mine. Why should I surrender the only thing left to me, my Lady? What would that leave me with?"

"_**Everlasting existence**_," the lovely creature said. "_**And honor. Glory. Power. Absolute mastery of all Creation, until the day the whole world dies and is consumed by the Void.**_"

"That will never happen," Matthias said darkly. But that was a lie. He didn't know how, he didn't know why, but he knew it was a lie. In his tortured flesh, in his broken bones, in the seat of that Black Exaltation inside of him, Matthias knew the truth. It was a truth that would scar an undisciplined mind for life for there was no forgiveness in it.

"_**It will happen**_," his visitor said, echoing his thoughts. "_**It must. So it is written in the stars themselves, Matthias. So it is revealed in the dreams of those who made Creation. If they saw it come about, they can see its end**_."

Fitful power crackled in her voice. Mnemon Matthias groaned at the edge of agony it laid across his nerves. He shook his head and glowered at her.

"Anathema."

"_**Once**_," she said agreeably. "_**Tell me, Matthias. How does it feel to be one of the Anathema yourself**_?" Her dry humor made her seem far more alive than she probably was. Her cloak of raiton feathers drifted in a nonexistent wind. It made him think the black feathers were alive still, gruesome as the thought was.

"A year ago, I would have killed myself. Several months ago, I would have invited my death in the sands. Today..." Matthias shrugged in his chains. "I can't condone the destruction of Creation, my Lady. But it's hard to call the Anathema monstrous when my own kin have done something much worse to me. All I did was serve the Realm at the expense of a drunk. For that, my soul is damned for all eternity. I suppose in that light...being an Anathema can do nothing more to me than has already been done."

"_**Unusual sentiment from a Realm-born**_," the woman with green eyes said. The black mesh of lines across them seemed to spin as he met her gaze. "_**But true**_."

"May I beg your name, my Lady?" Matthias asked politely. Those eyes widened slightly at the edges, not at the top and bottom. It was something no human's face should have been able to do. Somehow, it only enhanced her beauty.

"_**I am the Princess Magnificent with Lips of Coral and Robes of Black Feathers**_." Her head tilted to the side, twisting ever so slightly in an unnatural way. "_**Have you heard of me**_?"

"...I have," Matthias said, in an awed whisper. "You're the Deathlord of Great Forks, or you were. Histories record that you ruled near there centuries ago but vanished...never to be seen again. Until now, naturally."

"_**You please me**_," she said in a voice that was both cold and intimate at once. Her face became cruel but her hand touched his arm as lightly as a feather. "_**I know you also, Matthias**_."

"You do?" He frowned at her. "From the Lion?"

"_**You don't remember. I would have been disappointed if you had but I find myself disappointed that you do not. Tell me, Matthias...do you remember the Ghost Knife of Thiokol? Do you remember...the Fulcrum Hammer**_?"

"The Fulcrum Hammer?" Matthias said, astonished.

"_**I've been waiting for the Fulcrum Hammer for some time now**_," the Princess Magnificent said. Her voice emptied of what compassion he had heard, becoming as cold as the chill wind inside his soul. "_**You are he. And I mean to see you wielded as you should be**_."

The Fulcrum Hammer.

From years and years ago, from distant memory long forgotten, that name woke in Matthias' fragmenting mind. That woman, the one he'd forgotten, she'd called him that. A woman who...now that he thought about it...looked just like this woman did.

"You...you are the Lady in Green!" He hadn't doubted her, exactly, but it was a humbling prospect to be brought face to face with the entity that had made him what he was today. The First and Forsaken Lion might have turned him into an Anathema but the Princess Magnificent was responsible for a century and a half of his life!

"_**I am. I've waited for you...so long...**_" Her small white hands cupped his face as she drifted close. "_**Why couldn't you have come a century ago**_?" Tears gathered in her large night-green eyes. "_**Why not fifty years ago? Even ten and I could have been spared**_..."

A tremor moved through her jaw, disjointing the bone. Matthias almost pulled away, revolted, but her grip on his face was not to be contested. Those green and black orbs hardened into something like black emerald and her voice cut tiny lines across his chest when the Princess Magnificent spoke again.

"_**But you're here, Matthias. You will obey the First and Forsaken Lion...but you will serve me. You have a destiny, my poor one, and I gave you a century and a half to grow stronger for it. You owe me your life, Matthias. If I had not interfered, Fate would have claimed you that night and you would be just another ghost now, trying to fulfill prophecy with only your Arcanoi. Are you grateful**_?"

"Yes," Matthias said softly. His lips felt unexpectedly numb. So did his body, for that matter.

"_**Then consent**_." His head bent involuntarily against that voice. "_**Trust our Masters. Is it truly such a different thing? Tell me, Matthias. Do you own your soul? Is it yours to keep? Can you tell it which way to go when you die**_?"

"Those who die may be born again," Matthias quoted from memory. "The Dragons judge us out of love and guide our souls on the path they should walk."

"_**But your Pasiap doesn't love you**_," the Princess Magnificent sneered. "_**He condemns you forever for not bowing your head to a drunkard. What could my Masters do to you that is worse than what the Dragons have done? Nothing, Matthias. What could my Masters do to you that is better than what the Dragons have done? Everything, Abyssal. That you bear such a title is the first proofs of what loyalty gives you**_."

"Pasiap didn't demand my unquestioning obedience," Matthias said angrily.

"_**But he punishes you for not giving it to him**_," the Lady in Green said, almost sadly. "_**We all wear chains, Matthias. The difference is that our Masters show you what they are, rather than pull you to the ground with bindings you could not have seen**_."

Matthias bowed his head again, for his logic was failing. Everything she was saying was true. The cold whispering wind inside his soul knew it too.

"_**This is what you will do, Matthias**_." The Princess Magnificent knelt before him, anointing her green dress in his blood. Then she told him what he would do, why he would do it, and what he would demand in return.

Mnemon Matthias listened. He listened because he was without strength before her arguments. He listened because he had no other choice. And he listened because, in his heart, he knew what she was saying was the right thing to do.

The First and Forsaken Lion freed Matthias when he gave his consent. Slave demon-children with fierce hatred etched across innocent features tended to him, stripping off the remains of his breeches, bathing and cleaning him in deep black pools, caring for him. His wounds were bound, his hair groomed and trimmed, and he was sheathed in magnificent robes of the finest embroidery. Every need was cared for by things that wanted to rip him apart. In a place like this, it felt natural.

For days, Matthias struggled to master the procedures of self-subjugation, vows and oaths of fealty and the hundred small rituals for proper conduct. He knew his time was short to learn them all correctly. For nights, the Princess Magnificent had come to him in the spacious quarters the Lion had granted. What she did to him on those silken sheets defied his morals, his conscience, and his comprehension.

An Immaculate Monk's life could not be any more different than his life now. Much of him despised it, hated the necessity of the rituals. He was sickened at losing his virginity to a Deathlord, to a ghost. But a growing part of him knew it was right.

"_**Abyssal! Attend me**_!"

The doors flung open and the monster in soulsteel chains took two steps into Matthias' bedroom on the forth day of his freedom. The Abyssal started awake and leapt to his feet before his brain caught up to him. He was standing in the Third Position, characteristic of an Earth Immaculate before his sensei. He was also not dressed.

"_**Princess**_..." The Lion looked past his shoulder and Matthias looked with him. Sure enough, the Princess Magnificent knelt on the bed, thankfully clothed. She was positioned in such a way that she must have been watching him sleep. It did not make him feel comfortable.

"My Lord, I..."

"_**Silence, Abyssal**_." The First and Forsaken clenched his fist and the cracking of soulsteel plates closed Matthias' mouth in a second. "_**You overstep yourself. Her station is far above yours and you are not to trifle with her**_."

"Yes, my Lord." Matthias bowed his head, relieved that the Deathlord was turning his attention away from him. It wasn't the Heretic that the Lion was really thinking about, that much was obvious.

The Princess Magnificent rose from the luxurious sheets and drifted off the bed and toward the Lion. Her face was an ivory mask, as unmoving and unfeeling as the Lion's own black helmet. Matthias wondered if he was going to be put to death soon, the contested pawn in an obvious struggle between these two.

"_**Why**_?" the First and Forsaken Lion demanded.

She said nothing, merely looked up toward the space beneath his visor.

"_**Do you remember your place, Princess**_?" the Lion said cruelly, condescendingly.

She nodded once.

"_**Go**_."

The Princess Magnificent drifted from the room without a backwards glance. Matthias had the presence of mind to slip back into his robe while the Deathlords were talking so when his Lord turned his attention back to him, at least he was presentable. The Lion made no motion to step further in, instead standing as still as a statue.

"My Lord?" Matthias ventured.

"_**Have you learned all you were instructed**_?"

"I have, my Lord." Matthias bowed his head respectfully again. He knew the price of disobedience now.

"_**Good. Come**_."


	6. Chapter 6

Matthias felt awkward and out of place as he hurried after the giant Deathlord. The feeling grew when he saw the corridors flanked with hundreds upon hundreds of war ghosts, elite fighting spirits every one. The undead saluted the First and Forsaken Lion as he tread by and they cast envious looks at him as he followed in the Lion's wake.

Deeper and deeper into the Thousand they descended. They walked down stairways, short corridors and then dark stairwells with an ill-used look. Matthias kept pace and did his best to memorize the route. Soon, it passed beyond even his considerable powers at memory and observation as the hours of travel stretched on longer and longer.

Uncomplaining, with the discipline that had made him a formidable warrior for Pasiap, Mnemon Matthias persevered. The passage of time seemed to lengthen into a stretch as infinite as the stairs. They passed through several sets of doors, passed too many patrols of ghosts to number, and still they dropped lower into the depths of the mountain range. Throughout the whole journey, the First and Forsaken Lion did not speak and Matthias did not disturb his silence.

All at once, they came out of a moldering flight of steps and into a spacious hall. Ghosts were packed into tight fighting formations. Curious siege-like weapons were set into the walls, manned by more ghosts. The door at the other end of the room seemed a simple enough affair, all crumbling wood and tarnished brass but every inch of firepower here was directed at whatever might come out.

The two of them flew past that room as quickly as they had every other place in the Thousand but what lay on the other side was markedly different.

Past the door lay a realm of broken chains and iron.

The air itself felt different and Mnemon Matthias experienced a most curious sensation. If he had to put a label on it, he would have said he'd just walked into a waking nightmare. There was nothing immediately threatening in the tunnel the two walked down now but danger was ever-present in the air.

This place felt surreally real. The chains protruding from the wall, the ancient and worn racks and clamps lining the floor, even the disintegrating black rock of the walls bore the weight of history. This wasn't an intentional choice of hallway decoration, designed to elicit fear or terror. Instead, fear, terror and pain lingered in the winding passageways with the old metal, as if neither had faded after something horrible had happened long ago.

"_**Stay close**_," the First and Forsaken Lion said, still striding without fear or hesitation. Strangely, he never seemed to need to stoop, although Matthias had to duck parts of the ceiling frequently to avoid braining himself on a loose rock or a set of broken manacles.

"Yes, my Lord."

"_**I have words for you, Abyssal**_." The Lion didn't slow but his voice carried the tone of one with something dark to say.

"Yes, my Lord."

"_**I don't trust you**_."

"My Lord?" Matthias wasn't really surprised. Actually, what surprised him was that the First and Forsaken Lion was bringing this up with him at all.

"_**You are an unknown quantity to me, Day Caste. I have not tested your mettle in battle, either against me or for me. You spent several lifetimes serving your religion, serving your Realm, serving and belonging to a people I have nothing but undying hate for. There is every possibility that you will be crippled by conscience in the future. You could break**_."

"My Lord..." Mnemon Matthias paused, halting over what to say next. This was the first that he'd heard of the Lion's personal hate for the Realm. Did the ghost mean to attack the Blessed Isle itself?

The Deathlord had a good point, though. Where were his loyalties? Even if he swore his everlasting soul to the cause of this man's Masters, could he really sanction an attack against the whole continent? For with the Legion Sanguinary, there could be no other use for such a tremendous army but to invade en masse. "I am what I am," he said, hoping the ambiguous answer would pacify the stern warlord.

"_**It is good you do not lie to me, Abyssal**_!" the First and Forsaken Lion snarled. "_**I know the weight of your weak heart. A pity I do not have the decades it would take to grind in the edge I need. You will have to do, though**_."

"If you don't trust me, my Lord, why did you Exalt me?"

"_**Because They wanted me to**_."

The ominous reference to the First and Forsaken Lion's masters was bone-chilling, especially down here. Occasionally, the black rock gave way to decaying flesh. Sometimes it was bone. Every so often, it was a vile pus they had to step around or a churning mix of quicksilver and acid. What could exist down here, other than the Neverborn? ...unless the dead Primordials and the First and Forsaken Lion's masters were one and the same.

Strange moans and screams resonated across the labyrinthine tunnels but they met no one. Hours more passed before they broke clear of the maze. Mnemon Matthias was relieved to be out of the cramped halls until he saw what lay in front of him.

An immense stairwell spiraled endlessly down into darkness before the Abyssal. Large enough for troops to march down it, the cracked and breaking stairs slid downward along the circular wall like a ruin slowly crumbling in. The Lion started down. With just the two of them, there was plenty of room to walk but the emptiness filling the space encompassed by the walls had a vicious taste to it.

"My Lord?" Matthias asked as the long descent wore on. Perhaps it was fatigue that accounted for his willingness to question the Lion. He'd been awake for at least a day, probably two by now. But it was more likely that his lack of control accounted for it. Mnemon Matthias was not used to being so powerless, to be so uninformed when he had so many questions.

"_**You may speak, Abyssal**_." The Lion's voice was neither angry or pleased.

"What happens after this meeting?"

"_**Your training begins in earnest**_." At least the Deathlord sounded satisfied about that.

"Who will I be training with?"

"_**With me**_." The Lion marched on for another dozen steps before continuing. "_**When I do not have the time, you will perfect your fighting techniques against my best Nemissaries. Your evenings will be spent in tutelage of Necromancy, from me or from the Princess Magnificent if I have other obligations**_."

"Will I be training with other...Abyssal?" The new name of the Anathema wasn't one he'd heard before but the Deathlord had called him almost nothing else.

"_**Hardly**_," the First and Forsaken Lion chuckled. "_**You are the First. But you will not be the last. Remember that, Abyssal**_." The Deathlord chuckled again and said no more. Matthias wondered then what the Anathema really were...and if he was less damned than they or more.

At last, just as the decay on the stairwell became so marked that Matthias stared fearing to walk on them, they reached one last tunnel. The Lion turned into it and moved through drifting links of chain that swayed like curtains from the ceilings. Behind him, the child-demons slowed and had to be pulled several times to keep their pace. Mnemon Matthias didn't feel all that comfortable here either.

The passageway took less than fifteen minutes to cross before it widened out into the edge of a vast cavern, broken up only by a great sepulcher. The further the First and Forsaken Lion walked, the further Matthias followed him, the bigger the place seemed to be. It was easily the largest underground opening he'd ever heard of. By the time they'd crossed half of it, it was very obvious that it was larger in size than the Imperial City.

It was also obvious that the tomb ahead was as large as the whole grounds of the Imperial Palace.

It could be nothing else but a burial building. The ornate carvings were full of iconic representations of the dead, symbols of warding and reward for the afterlife. Great sections of the wall were carved to show unspeakable torments, some that made Matthias physically ill to see. Everywhere he looked, he found a new blasphemy, a new perversion, some new portrayal of torture and torment and the depravity of evil.

Finally, he just kept his eyes on the ground.

Still, the memories of what he'd seen resonated in his thoughts, creeping out from behind his eyes to tease his mind. Matthias ground his teeth. Seen through his mind's eye, the torture seemed seductively agreeable. It was right for the master to dominate his lessers and the statues of horribly flayed people almost smiled with pleasure they refused to show.

What was wrong with him?

"_**From the moment you set foot in this mausoleum, you must begin the rituals you were to learn. For your sake, you had best perform them perfectly. He Who Holds in Thrall is not a forgiving Master**_."

The First and Forsaken Lion paused outside of the tomb. Matthias stopped too, until he realized the Deathlord wanted him to go in without him.

"My Lord, I thought you were presenting me to your Masters."

"_**I have**_," the Lion answered. "_**Now go. He wishes to speak with you. Do not keep Him waiting**_."

Mnemon Matthias did not know how much time had passed when he finished. From the sweat dripping off his body and from the grinding ache of his worn body, it was obvious that the exacting rituals had taken some time. Exhausted, Matthias knelt before the interior tomb of He Who Holds in Thrall and awaited his Master's judgment.

"_**I see you**_."

The Voice was a curious chorus, belonging to the broken bodies of half a dozen...things before the inner sarcophagus. The actual coffin was large enough to fit the biggest sailing ship in the world inside, implying something disturbing about the size of it's inhabitant. Arranged before the single small door leading inside, the damned dead lay and it was to them Matthias had been instructed to worship.

"_**I see the one Heaven calls Mnemon Matthias**_." The unearthly voices issued from torn jaws and mouths, each deceased creature speaking a single word picked up by another, as if rehearsed. Matthias was glad he was required to look down. He didn't want to see their monstrosity nor what had been done to them.

"_**I see the one the Realm calls the Heretic**_." Matthais felt nervous but knew better than to speak. His fate was entirely in the hands of this creature, this master that the First and Forsaken Lion served. His only comfort lay in the fact that nothing he could do, nothing that could be done to him would be worse than what had already been pronounced by the Mouth of Peace.

"_**I see the one the First and Forsaken Lion calls Abyssal**_." Kneeling, Matthias waited submissively for the Master's judgment.

"_**Do you offer Me your life**_?"

"Yes." It wasn't doing him much good anyway and he had nothing to look forward to but a few dozen lifetimes as a beetle somewhere in the East.

"_**Do you offer Me your soul**_?"

Matthias winced. It had come to this. Now that he was here, could he really go through with it?

He couldn't help but look up at the wrecked corpses of the indescribable creatures that lay before the tomb. They were looking at him...and there was something wonderful in their gaze. Join us, they seemed to whisper inside of him. Experience this perfect state. Connect to the perfect quiet of death. Bend your head and give us your soul and we will care for it as the priceless treasure it is. Be our slave and become free.

"Yes," Matthias said at last. He couldn't help himself. The wicked allure of their eyes was more than he could stand. Dropping his eyes back to the floor, he felt a little clearer but the images on the walls still burned away at his conscience. What had this place done to him? What was he now, really?

"_**Do you offer Me your name**_?"

"Yes," Matthias said slowly. That was unexpected. Why would they care what his name was?

"_**Do you offer Me your allegiance**_?"

"Conditionally," Matthias said.

A great roar of rage went up and something black suddenly pressed upon the Abyssal from all sides. The world itself caught him and its grip promised absolute destruction at its wielder's wish. If the Underworld was a dream of the Neverborn, as some scholars said, this Neverborn was God and Matthias was without hope.

"_**You dare**_!" the corpses shrieked at him from somewhere beyond the blackness.

"For the Princess Magnificent with Lips of Coral and Robes of Black Feathers!"

A ominous silence settled over the tomb. Matthias waited for his end but it didn't come. That was a good sign, he thought.

"_**Continue**_," the Voice said at last.

"I do not ask for my freedom for I stand before you a condemned man!" Matthias cried out. "But she is a devoted servant of the Void. The reason I kneel before you at all is because of her! My only condition is this; that when the time is right, you free her from the First and Forsaken Lion. Allow her to carry out this prophecy she spent a century and a half shaping!"

"_**Done**_," pronounced the corpses with a finality that made Matthias tremble where he knelt. So easy? Was he truly so valuable? Or was her freedom so small a thing? "_**I claim you as My own. Come to Me**_."

Matthias rose to his feet as the blackness fled. He was helpless before the irresistible force of that Voice. Slowly, he stepped over the broken bodies. As he passed, they clamped manacles around his feet, around the stumps of his hands, at last around his neck. He paused without knowing why and he didn't even shiver when they pulled his robe from him.

Chains slid over his naked flesh, the cruel soulsteel cutting his skin where it passed. Loops of it locked into place at each manacle, from toe to hand to head. Matthias stood passively as, link by link, his body was encircled in a loose mesh of chains.

In a second of unbelievable agony, the chains suddenly snapped rigidly into a cage of soulsteel built across his whole body. The metal tore into his flesh in every place and quickly his skin darkened with freely flowing blood. Matthias had been an Earth Immaculate. He was no stranger to injury. But this...this was a pain-wracked sovereignty he would never escape from.

And yet, as he stepped beyond the bodies to the door, the chains moved with him. Over the pain, beyond the red streaks he was leaving across the decaying stone floor, Mnemon Matthias felt a power he'd never imagined. The chains seemed to bleed away his fear and fill him instead with strength.

Opening the door was difficult without hands but Matthias managed it. He closed it behind him once he was inside. Then, he was face to face with the Truth behind that Voice. Comprehension slipped from his mind and words wrapped around his denial at the sight.

"_**You are Mine. The Fulcrum Hammer comes to Me at last and he is Mine. You are late but not unexpectedly so. And now, I will tell you your new destiny**_."

_The Prophecy of the Fulcrum Hammer._

_Dragon's byblow by a blow,_

_Honor, disgrace and depravity and discontent,_

_War he will bring, against the Pivot Child he stands._

_Before him life falters, green dies, color fades,_

_With hands that scream, he will bring forth screams,_

_And through them, destine all of Creation to die. _

_A Hinge of the world, upon him fate turns,_

_To light or the darkness he'll deliver existence,_

_But for him, the choice is already made._

"_**You will destroy Creation. You will kill the world and bring it into the Void. This, I dreamed an Age ago. This dream touched the dreams of the Five Maidens and the Pivot Child took shape, your adversary, your nemesis. But by giving rise to your opposite, they accepted My dream and allowed for its reality**_."

"_**This is your fate and not even the entire combined might of Heaven can turn it aside. You will triumph. The Void is inevitability and you are the Hammer that will drive Creation to it**_."

Mnemon Matthias felt the Voice root itself in him, driving past his flesh and spirit to chain him inside as he was already out. He screamed as Its voracious hunger chewed his identity apart until there was nothing left before the Neverborn but the shattered pieces of what had been a man.

The wreckage that was left shuddered and bled upon the cold stone, waiting for a name and a purpose.

"_**The First and Forsaken Lion will give you your new title in time but I name you Dissent. You are the Fulcrum Hammer, Dissent. Become My weapon against the world. Obey the First and Forsaken Lion but serve Oblivion**_."

"_**In the end, there is only the End**_."


	7. Chapter 7

**The 4th Day of Ascendant Fire, 765 in the Year of Our Empress**.

Ledaal Vira staggered across the Plain of Shards as fast as she could. Dissent, who watched her pitilessly, shook his head at her pace. She would never make it to the tiny Shadowland they'd stumbled through a few years ago before it closed.

The Dragon-Blooded Monk limped along, leaving flecks of red in her wake. That alone made tracking her laughably easy in the Underworld. Nothing caught the eye like fresh living blood. She'd been lucky so far that the Hungry Ghosts that rode the Southern storms hadn't scented her yet.

Dissent kept close to her, watching her slow progress across the ashy sand of the Underworld. Her feet looked too lacerated by the loose shale to stand on, yet she pressed on with endurance worthy of Pasiap. The emaciated Monk looked determined beneath the exhaustion that wrapped her more tightly than her robes. That clothing had held up fairly well but she had not.

"Vira," Dissent whispered in the wind.

Ledaal Vira whipped about, hands raised in a master's 14th Stance. Of course, she lacked the Essence to use its associated Charm. Still, her reactions were good for a woman who would die soon. Dissent examined her more minutely and nodded at his assessment.

She was near the end of her life now. Amazingly, she still looked young. Perhaps death was another few decades off in the world of the living, if that's where she'd been. Instead, time and torment in the Thousand had stripped her slowly away. Her clothing hung loosely on her since she'd lost almost half her weight. Every month, there was less life in her eyes because of torment she had endured.

"It won't be long now," Dissent whispered again, confident she could not see him beneath the shield of his Charms.

Tears rose in the corners of her eyes. The Day Caste took a deep breath at the beauty of the sight. A single drop fell from her cheek to the sand. Such a waste of perfection.

"Let me go," Vira said. If he hadn't been so close, he would not have heard her.

"You won't make it, my old teacher," Dissent growled quietly. "You're too weak now. And if you made it to Creation, what would you do? Die in the sands there? You must know you are too far away to ever be saved."

"Yes," the Monk said, swallowing hard. "I would die in the sands. I would die with the sun on my face once more, with the feel of the True Earth in my hands, against my feet."

"So useless," Dissent sighed. A grating noise, like a rusty steel gate forced open, sounded as he popped his new knuckles. They lacked the tactile feeling his old ones had but his soulsteel hands had a number of advantages over the original set. He could stop a sword blade without Essence now, rip the Essence from the living and the dead alike, and his fingers were fearsomely strong.

For Dissent, the Abyssal who wore the face but not the name of the Heretic Mnemon Matthias, he hardly remembered what it had been like to lack them.

"To you," Vira said. She groaned slightly as she turned around and began walking again.

"Creation is evil," he said calmly. "Look at all the terrible things that go on in it. How many peasant revolts have you witnessed, Vira? How many times have you ever opened your eyes to see the sick injustices, the drunken orgies, the waste the Dragon-Blood perpetuate in the name of spiritual superiority,? How many times did you close your eyes to it?"

"They do the best they can," she answered, limping along. Dissent paced her without effort. They both knew he could stop her as easily as he could hide from her. It made their conversation that much more polite.

"For nothing," Dissent said. "It can't last. Nothing ever does. You just begin again, over and over. The wheel of reincarnation continues to turn and Heaven holds out the feeble promise of things getting better. What a lie."

"Is it a lie, Matthias?" she asked, raising an eyebrow at the horizon.

"My name is Dissent!" he snarled. The shadowy gloom of the Underworld parted for his fist and the soulsteel cracked into her back, hurling her to the sandy ash. She lay there, trying to get back up, just trying to breathe.

Dissent watched her coldly, contemptuously. He'd broken two of her ribs with that punch. He would have to be more careful to make her last.

"You didn't answer my question," Ledaal Vira panted. Agony etched itself across her face as she drew herself up.

"Of course it's a lie. It's been thousands of years yet poverty is still widespread, peasants are still a millionfold more common than the Dragon-Blooded. Would you say that the mindlessly repetitive lives of piety the peasants live has failed to please Heaven? I would. More than that, our world can only exist on their backs, Vira. What kind of a Realm would it be if there were no peasants? Can you imagine it?"

"Yes," she said, once more on her feet. She took a step forward, then another, and then kept going despite her pain. "Eventually it will be, when all are enlightened and in union with the Dragons."

"It's a delusion, Vira. Who would farm? Who would grind their life away? No, the secret crime of Heaven is that it keeps people from getting better, life to life. It has to or it couldn't favor the few, the privileged. Like you."

"My life has ever been one of service," she said calmly. The sky was starting to change color, just a little. She was nowhere near that Shadowland yet she kept going. Dissent shook his head in grudging admiration. Once, he'd made a walk like that and for much the same reason.

"The Void offers an alternative," Dissent whispered to her from beneath his Charms. "It would free you. It wants to free the whole world from the ruin it's fallen to. The death of the Neverborn broke this world and it can never be repaired. You would find such peace, Vira, if you just let Them bring it down. If you just stopped fighting."

"I value my soul too much to ever choose that," Vira said fiercely.

"Yet you would destroy any chance for my soul to ever reach ascension?" Dissent's voice was rough with anger. "You trapped me in this rotting pit for all time, Vira, to rot with it. Maybe there is union with the Immaculate Dragons but I'll never see it. Does it really surprise you that I'm on the side of Those who want to bring it down? What else is there for me?" He laughed at his old teacher.

"You're so lost, my old student," Vira said weakly. Her skin was white as chalk, the bones of her face and hands showing clearly through enervated flesh. Her last few years had been filled with every torment known and imagined. Even if he brought her back to the Thousand, she would not survive the year.

Dissent was sobered by the realization. His old teacher, the last contact he had with his life was going to die. Inexplicably, it bothered him.

"I know where I am," Dissent answered her. "And you should know where you are, my old teacher. Vira...it's time you accepted the truth. The First and Forsaken Lion has you. Whether it's by my hand or another's, there will be absolutely nothing else for you but suffering and torment from now until the day you die. Your ghost will either be chained for use in the armies or will be fodder for new soulsteel. Either way, you're more damned than I am. This walk is useless."

"Unless you let me go," she said, her voice once again choked with emotion. He walked by her side, unseen, and somberly observed her cry.

"Why did you come out here?" Dissent shifted to her other side, keeping his voice changing, keeping her off balance. She was too weak to be of any danger to him but it was good practice. "Did you really escape the Thousand to die?"

"Oh yes," Ledaal Vira breathed, wincing as a misstep jostled her broken ribs.

"All of this and still your spirit hasn't broken." Dissent looked her up and down, thoughtfully. "I can't believe you have the strength to do this. You're choosing to die in a way as slow and painful as any I can imagine for you, teacher. How wretched existence must be for you." He smirked. "How delightful."

"You're going to find one day that your own existence is worse than mine." Her tears were a marked contrast to the fact that her feet weren't leaving blood trails anymore. Not too long now. "Everything I've suffered, even the way I die today...your life will end much worse than my own. And it won't be because of my condemnation or that of the Order."

"What other kind could there be?" Dissent said through narrowed eyes.

"Your own."

Dissent laughed at her, even as he laughed at himself for feeling sorry for her.

"You will find I'm right, student," she sighed wearily, closing her eyes. "All your life, you've made the same choices. Mnemon Matthias wanted something good that he couldn't have. So he railed against it, took it, even though he knew it was wrong. He tried to do good with it and failed. Now, Dissent wants to distance himself from what he was so he does things that would make poor Matthias curl up and die. Either way, you are still torn between right and wrong and you know it. It's the same choice, the same dichotomy. You cannot commit good without evil but your evil will always be colored by your goodness."

"What are you talking about?" Seriously, where was this coming from? She'd hardly said a word in the years they'd held her. Dissent had trained against her, honed his old martial skill into a peerless battlemastery surpassed only by the First and Forsaken Lion himself. In all that time, she had never expressed these kinds of feelings.

"No matter who you are now, I remember the boy who loved Pasiap," Ledaal Vira said softly. "It was true love, a feeling any worshipper might hope to find in their devotion to the Dragons. You sinned, my old friend, but you tried to make something right out of that. I recognize your lifetime of service, you see. Your conscience puts a lie to your actions. Matthias may be gone but his legacy lives on in you. And it will poison every evil work you commit with his love."

"Shut up! Damn you!" Dissent seethed at the abused Monk, clenching his soulsteel hands so hard the metal twanged with strain. Despite himself, he couldn't bring himself to strike her. At this point, if he did, Vira would not survive it.

"You are damned, student, but not by me. Your conscience and your choices will forever war within you. You will never know peace. Be kind to yourself, for the sake of who you were." Tears glimmered in Vira's eyes again. "Die. Your empty philosophy is correct in one respect; death is peaceful and through it your soul may be washed clean of memory. Only then will you find any hope for happiness, if you even remember what that word means."

Black rage rose inside Dissent, twisting his reason aside beneath his desperate desire to silence her. After all this time, he had thought his heart was imperishable to accusation but each word had struck home. He did pity her and part of him did despise what he had become.

There could be only one outcome.

With tears in his eyes, Dissent kicked her to the ground. She lay there, helpless before him, as he spoke terrible words. Each syllable resonated through the overcast skies and the clouds cut loose with a howling storm of rain, blood and ash in response. That was only a symptom of the singular Void Circle Necromancy he knew. The black power that coursed out of his bones and skated across the soulsteel surface of his hands was meant for something far stronger than weather manipulation.

"Peace is a lie," he said, unexpectedly choked up with a sorrow he fought to ignore. "There is only suffering and the Void. In a year, you will agree with me. In a century, you will beg for release but know this, Vira: You will never see the sun again. Because I...am...never going to let you go."

The power coiled in his fingers, begging for release. The Necromancy was fearsomely strong and he had never intended to use it until just the right day, perhaps years from now. But Vira wouldn't live that long, he could see it now, and he couldn't let himself be weakened by her anymore. His hate kept him from the abiding sorrow in his heart but still it was there, contaminating him. There was nothing else to do but kill the source.

His fingers caressed her face, pantomiming a lover's touch.

Ledaal Vira screamed as she'd never screamed before, helpless before the hideous Necromancy that bored into her. She lay in the sand, twitching in torment, her eyes wide and expression pleading. Dissent watched her pitilessly.

There was no hope against the Threefold Chaining of the Living.

With a wail of anguish, Vira seemed to seizure, though the truth was much darker. Blood welled up out of her mouth, out of her eyes and ears. Then, blood began welling everywhere across her body. Her skin pulled tight and she bared her teeth, her mouth opening wide.

At any moment, Dissent could have stopped the Necromancy. He wanted to. That fact was why he forced himself to go through with it. Malevolent laughter Whispered in his mind, blanketed his anguish. He smiled.

Dissent gestured imperiously and Ledaal Vira, Immaculate Monk of Pasiap, died in a shower of gore as her own skeleton ripped its way free from the flesh that contained it.

In a way imperceptible to mortal eyes, Dissent watched the trails of his Essence arching between the corpse and the skeleton before him. With a second gesture, a monstrous roaring beast writhed free of the desecrated flesh. Dissent stared Vira's Hungry Ghost down until the snarling thing bowed its head to him in obedience.

A third gesture and Vira herself came forth. She looked as young as she ever had, even more beautiful than she'd been in life to his eyes. Pale and washed out, she wiped tears from her face and looked at her skeleton and her Hungry Ghost.

"Do you feel it?" Dissent asked her.

"Master," she said, twisting her mouth as if it were a greatly unpleasant thing. Vira sighed then and bowed her head. "You have leashed me as thoroughly as any Oath-Binding Rod. But I will never truly agree with you."

"Your skeleton shall be my slave, tending to my quarters and personal needs." He ran a finger across a bloody length of bone and licked it off. Disgusting. Naturally, that's why he did it. "Your Hungry Ghost will be a bodyguard, and what a magnificent thing it is. It's had centuries to swell in power, Vira. It could kill you without effort if I ordered it."

"Will you, Master? What would you have of me?" Ledaal Vira looked resigned. That pleased him. If only he could do something about that damnable spark of resistance in her eyes, that lurking sense of a truth he didn't grasp.

"Whatever I wish. No doubt you will be another slave, perhaps a messenger or a seneschal when I am away. For now, you will serve me best in my bed."

She looked revolted. She wasn't the only one, either. Raping a ghost forever enslaved to his will made him feel ill. And that was why it was necessary that he do so.

Dissent passed the halls of the First and Forsaken Lion with the ease of long-familiarity. He was unchallenged in his approach, for all in the Thousand knew of the Lion's First Abyssal. Regrettably, his personal title came slowly. Meticulous Owl had just earned his name and he'd been an Abyssal barely a year now. Dissent only had He Who Holds in Thrall's pronouncement to name him.

Somewhere in the Labyrinth, Dissent's Monstance awaited. It would wait a while longer, until the Lion gave him leave to finish what had begun. Dissent was resigned to putting up with the lurking voice of his conscience until then, even when it threatened his commitment. Perhaps that is why he walked with such speed and agitation now.

"I will see my Lord," Dissent demanded at the entrance to the throne room. Even he could not pass the doors at a whim. It was only a cursory pause, though, and the guards waved him through without making any effort to check with the First and Forsaken Lion. So they had been instructed.

Behind him trailed the Threefold Chained Living, Ledaal Vira's skeleton, soul and spirit. The woman herself was somber and sad, befitting what had happened to her. The Hungry Ghost churned indistinctly and it always wound, as long as his Necromancy bound it. The skeleton, of course, was just a skeleton.

"_**Abyssal**_," the First and Forsaken Lion said, acknowledging him as he entered. "_**You finally did it, I see**_." The Deathlord refused to call him Dissent, though the Lion hadn't begrudged anyone else who did so. Dissent wondered if it was pride or something else.

"My Lord. Ledaal Vira."

"_**You've impressed me**_." The Lion's giant armored form shifted slightly on the throne, making a grating sound not unlike Dissent's own hands. "_**I wondered if you would have the stomach to go through with it. Threefold Chaining of the Living, too. An especially painful and gruesome way to kill someone, especially the person most important to you. Well done**_."

"Thank you, my Lord!" Dissent said, bowing low and crossing his arms respectfully. The Deathlord praised sparingly.

"_**You have earned the right to study Sorcery with the Princess Magnificent**_." The Lion's rumbling chuckle echoed in the throne room ominously. "_**Be diligent, Abyssal. It is a more difficult discipline than Shadowland or Labyrinth Circle Necromancy. It is essential that you do so, however. Do not shirk the Void Circle either**_."

"My Lord...I would beg a question from you." Dissent kept his head bowed in hopes of pacifying the tempestuous Deathlord. He had known from the start that the metal-clad giant of a ghost was not a man to cross or even annoy. This was the first time in years he had tried to inquire of the mighty warlord.

"_**Ask it**_."

"What is your purpose for me?"

Silence stretched across the vast space of the room. Dissent remained in subjection, waiting for his Lord to decide what to tell him. Certainly he had studied and mastered the doctrines of the Void, the philosophies of the dead, and had come to embrace them as the truth of existence. He knew what the Abyssal were for.

But the First and Forsaken Lion had always had a plan for him. That had been obvious from the first day they met. It was more obvious when Dissent considered his own Exaltation. Why a Day Caste? The Dragon-Blooded he'd been had avoided the Wyld Hunt for over a decade on the Blessed Isle but that was hardly reason. He had been a priest and a warrior. Subterfuge did not come naturally to him.

"_**You will help me kill Creation**_."

Dissent waited, not moving a muscle.

"_**I know practically nothing about the world of the living, Abyssal**_." The Lion sighed heavily. "_**You have been an immensely helpful resource in that regard, even if your tactical information was lacking**_."

"_**But there is one thing that has never changed. The Manse of the Deliberative still stands. From it, a single man could control the engines of destruction used to protect Creation. Those same engines could be used against it**_."

Dissent couldn't help the involuntarily rush of air. He was relieved that Ledaal Vira had gasped with him, even more shocked than he. Only the necromantic leash on her will kept her from speaking out of turn.

"_**When you are ready, Day Caste, you will travel to Meru. You will infiltrate the Realm's defenses, pass by their guardians and their protectors, and you will break into the Manse of the Deliberative. You will kidnap the Scarlet Empress, force the Hearthstone from her, and then you will take control of Creation's defense network**_."

"My Lord!" Dissent's eyes rose despite his best efforts at composure. "But that would kill..."

"_**I would estimate 85 of the living population of Creation**_," the Lion answered him. He sounded coldly thoughtful, calculating numbers rather than the sheer volume of life that represented. "_**The fact that Creation is so much smaller than it used to be will help. That is my plan for you, Abyssal. You will take control of the Manse and kill as much of the world as you can with it. The Legion Sanguinary will do the rest. You will do this and serve me, He Who Holds in Thrall, and the Void**_."

"My Lord," Dissent managed. It wasn't quite an agreement but it was the best he could do.

"_**Go. Enjoy your new slave. And remember to speak with the Princess Magnificent tonight**_." The Lion dismissed him and Dissent left as quickly as was seemly.

Outside, he had a chance to gather his thoughts. He walked with a brisk stride, eyes fixed ahead, inviting no conversation from the various guards, officials or Meticulous Owl on his way to see the Deathlord. Behind him, the soft sobs of Ledaal Vira were quiet counterpoint to his own internal suffering.

The conscience he so ruthless subjugated had woken to full life inside of him. Dissent knew what he was meant to do in the abstract, and certainly he'd committed his share of atrocities. More than many, in fact, for he could not afford any weakness in his devotion to He Who Holds in Thrall or the Void. But the Abyssal was as astonished as the man.

It was one thing to fight the living. It was quite another to wield the Hearthstone that would end all life everywhere. At least he knew why the Lion had made him an Day Caste now.

Dissent made it to his quarters. He ordered the skeleton to tend to his room, ordered the Hungry Ghost to guard his door, and ordered Ledaal Vira to his bed. He discarded his funerary robes of resplendent royalty and stood naked before his old teacher, clad only in the taut chains interlocked across his body and flesh. He didn't bleed anymore but his skin was a mass of open wounds from the Enthralled Chains, a fact that had always horrified Vira.

He stepped onto his bed and looked at the resigned ghost of his teacher. She was hardly horrified now. She was too shattered by the Lion's revelation to even acknowledge him. He would have pressed the point...but he couldn't.

Slowly, Dissent sank to the sheets. A trembling began in his muscles. A tightening in his chest, an unbearable pressure, crushed his heart. When he tried to breathe out, only an anguished moan came forth. His tears were the only reason he realized he was sobbing.

The Fulcrum Hammer. He was the Fulcrum Hammer. He Who Holds in Thrall had planned this all along.

He really would kill the world.

And he didn't want to.

Dissent clenched his jaw so tightly he felt his teeth crack. The blood that filled his mouth helped him concentrate. With soulsteel fingers, he rent his own chest, tearing great wounds across his chain-latticed flesh. At last the pain was enough.

He grinned and felt the rebellion in his soul die beneath his hate. He was doing the world a favor. Those snatched up by the Dragons could enjoy their reward. The rest would suffer extinction, the same fate Heaven and Earth had proclaimed on him.

The Void was inevitability. Dissent concentrated on that truth, meditated upon it, breathed it in and out. Gradually his composure came back, his tears dried and he was both master and slave again.

"Vira..." he growled. With a thought, he forced her to look at him. "If you thought the suffering you knew when you were alive was terrible...you have only an inkling of what I'm about to do to you." He caught her up and bore her to the bed and there was no inch of kindness in any part of him.

Dissent coaxed new heights of volume from Vira's screams in new ways that night. If he had paid attention to it, he would have realized he felt no pleasure from his actions, only revulsion and pity. But, instead, Dissent paid total attention to doing what he had to do.

If he was going to break the world, then first he had to break himself.


	8. Chapter 8

**The 20th Day of Resplendent Water, 767 in the Year of Our Empress**.

The Abyssal paced the area of the command point, ducking now and then to avoid hitting his head on the top of the tent. The Lieutenant in charge of this operation didn't seem to notice, just as she had pointedly ignored every sign of his impatience. He was not within her chain of command but neither was he her superior officer, exactly. The ambiguity, and her lack of reaction, annoyed him.

"I don't suppose we're ready yet," Dissent asked, knowing how futile it was.

"Not yet, sir," the Lieutenant answered, spying out the terrain ahead.

In the Underworld, a place Dissent now knew better than Creation, this would be the Plain of Shards, the vast desert dominated by the First and Forsaken Lion and the desert nomads permitted to exist there. This was not the Underworld though. Today, the Lion was after living prey.

"Let me know when, Lieutenant," the Abyssal growled at the much shorter woman, eager to get to work. He had been an Immaculate Monk, a student of Pasiap. Once, patience had come as naturally as breathing. Now, it seemed so pointless when everything was doomed to die sooner or later.

At the moment, Dissent fervently hoped it would be sooner. Although the hastily erected command tent shielded them, the Sun beat down on the desert with brutal heat and light. Even in here, he could feel the roaring anger of the God who had killed Dissent's Masters.

"The Third and Forth Infantry Factions are in position, sir," said the Lieutenant, surveying the scene with a spyglass. She really was an amazingly statuesque woman. There were courtesans in the Thousand, both living and dead, who lacked her beauty or perfect body.

It wasn't the abstractly pure gorgeousness of the Princess Magnificent either. She radiated fertility, or would if she were not clad in the First and Forsaken Lion's uniform. A soldier's outfit could not conceal her full breasts, the narrow waist with seductive hips or a splendid ass that invited fondling. The first time he'd seen her, he had thought she was a concubine playing dress-up...until he'd seen her smoothly graceful gait and the steel in her eyes.

"Lord Dissent?" the Lieutenant repeated.

The Abyssal turned his head to face the commander, refusing to acknowledge that he'd practically forgotten she was talking because he'd been too busy gawking at her.

"We're ready."

"Quite." Dissent flexed his hands and smirked at the slight jerk in her junior officers when his soulsteel knuckles popped like a dozen swords snapping in half. "Let's get to it."

Dissent felt the Essence flows of his Black Exaltation and took comfort in the chill of the Hearthstone the Lion had lent him. It gave him the only access he had to renewable Essence up here in Creation. He couldn't wait to get back to the Thousand. The rotting stink of life, even in this barren land, nauseated him.

"I'm beginning now," Dissent said, as the first arcane words bubbled up in his mind.

Beyond the command point laid a stretch of desert broken up only by a large oasis. The settlement here was called Isis Minor and was a sizeable one, thanks to both the plentiful water and the iron fist of the Minotaur, a particularly ugly God-Blooded lord who controlled thousands of soldiers.

Tactically, this was a difficult place to attack without superior numbers. With so much open land, a surprise strike was impossible. The walls of Isis Minor were only clay but the nearest wood or stone for siege weaponry was far too many miles for any but the most determined attacker to bring in. Even the Fair Folk had failed to conquer it, though they had certainly tried often enough.

The First and Forsaken Lion wanted this place taken with only 5000 men, the Lieutenant's entire command. Dissent had seen the quality of this Company, one of the few mostly living groups the Lion had. They were excellent and had a reasonable chance of accomplishing it on their own.

With the presence of the Lion's First Abyssal, success was absolutely certain.

As if to prove that fact, Dissent brandished his fists toward the sky. The world darkened as life and death ceased to be meaningful different around the city. He could hear the screams from here, telling him that the tactic had worked. Warghosts would be material and cutting into the city's defenders already as the Shadowland settled in on the city.

At that signal, the 4 Infantry Factions attacked by total surprise. They seemed to come out of nowhere, an impossible feat for even Sorcery...but not so for the Elementals of Earth and Fire, those who hated the water of this oasis, hated it's arrogant God, and hated their subjection under the strong fist of the Minotaur. Each soldier had nearly walked to the walls themselves with their aid. The Gods were fleeing the burgeoning Shadowland now, betrayed, but they had served their purpose.

"The Second is slowing up against that wall," the Lieutenant observed through her spyglass.

"They'll be fine, I'm sure," Dissent replied, standing in silent superiority. He didn't need a spyglass to watch the battle, thanks to his Five Fold Sensory Exercise.

"Third has broken over the top, sir," the Lieutenant reported. "They're taking control now."

"Forth has captured their wall as well," Dissent chuckled. "Eager, aren't they?"

"Yes, sir," the Lieutenant said sharply, without any trace of humor.

"What's that?" Dissent said wonderingly, as he felt...something. His eyes sharpened inhumanly as he brought his Through Dead Eyes Charm to bear. "Someone's working Sorcery in Isis Minor. I thought your intelligence said they had no Exalts, other than the Minotaur."

"There was no indication of any," the Lieutenant said calmly, a flash of temper just beneath the polite reply. Despite Dissent's higher rank, the Lieutenant was the field commander and the First and Forsaken Lion had made it very clear where the lines of authority ran. Dissent was her superior but there was little he could do.

"There's a Sorcerer in there," the Abyssal said, looking back over the city. "Too far off to tell what it is...but if the Minotaur has a Sorcerer, they'll need dealing with."

"Sir, if you go, we lose our field Sorcerer. Please remain and support the troops." She didn't seem the least bit bothered that she had no way of stopping him from going on his own. The First Abyssal was not a Dusk Caste, after all, nor a Daybreak. His role was what he made it.

"You remain, Lieutenant. But I'm going to reinforce our men. If they have a skilled Exalt, you may wish to send in the Fifth with me because we're going to lose a lot of soldiers against them by the time I get there."

"Sir." The Lieutenant saluted smartly, which made her ample bosom bounce in a very pleasing way. Curvaceous and capable, a nice combination. "Then I will accompany you."

"Then let's move, Lieutenant," Dissent said, grinning at the prospect of the bloodshed to come.

He moved ahead of the Fifth Infantry Faction and he was somewhat amused to see the Lieutenant pacing him. The statuesque woman ran with an economy of motion that spoke of long and intensive physical training. She carried a steel sword and her face was a caricature of ice, faintly cruel alongside the control. The Lieutenant had definitely not softened from her years of safer command.

"You don't think I need protecting, do you, Lieutenant?" Dissent chuckled. He could have outrun her but an extra minute wouldn't likely make much difference in this battle. If a few dozen of their soldiers died, it wasn't so much a loss of manpower as it was a transfer into a different division.

"No, sir."

"You want to get into the fighting."

"Yes, sir." At last a trace of pleasure lit her eyes as she glanced at him. "I've been a soldier and field officer most of my life. Your entry gives me an excuse to join the fight. Despite what you may think, our intelligence is quite thorough. My junior officers can manage things while I prove my loyalty."

"For the Lion," Dissent said, not really questioning her.

"For his Majesty, the First and Forsaken Lion."

The reverential awe in her voice told him everything. This woman was pledged to the Deathlord, heart, mind and soul. While most of those who fought for the Lion subscribed to the philosophy of the Void, none matched the single-minded loyalty he saw in this one. She was a fanatic, even if she was mortal, and that made her very, very dangerous.

"Impress me and I'll put in a good word for you." Just a hint of temper warmed her eyes before she schooled her features, but he'd still seen it. Disgusting. He was not that kind of Abyssal, whatever Meticulous Owl's tastes were. "In battle, Lieutenant," Dissent clarified and was rewarded with a stiff nod.

They reached the walls of the city. The Second was still struggling hard to take the tall clay battlements and it didn't help that the defenders were raining arrows down on them. The field commanders yelled at their troops, the grunts climbed and died, even as the defenders were slain and more brought to the fore.

Why hadn't First, Third, and Forth flanked the Minotaur's troops on the wall and crushed them?

With a snarl, Dissent charged forward, striking his soulsteel knuckles against each other. Great shrieking sparks fell from his hands. Then he reached the wall.

Roaring, Dissent exploded right through it.

Defenders on the inside were racing to get up the walls. Those immediately around him fell from the shower of debris and the whole formation slowed up, beginning to react to him. Stupid.

Dissent swung his mighty arms as he ran and shattered their ranks. Archers unleashed arrows at him and that was just as useless. The shafts that caught him broke against his stone-like skin and their misses hit their own troops. A brace of swordsmen tried to stop him. He ignored their pathetic weapons, trusting in the power of the Enthralled Chains binding him head to toe to stop mortal steel.

Instead, his fists pumped in rapid-fire. Executing one Earth-Style kata after another, his soulsteel fists broke faces, crushed breastplates in, and batted aside swords with contemptuous ease. Even when he'd been a Dragon-Blooded Immaculate, these would have been little trouble for him. As it was now, their blood and death only made him stronger.

"Ahead in the courtyard, sir."

Dissent turned, surprised at the address, only to see the Lieutenant savagely hacking a soldier's head off. She was slightly out of breath but her sword was out and she was laying into the enemy with a ferocity that shocked even him. A fanatic indeed.

There were more important things to worry about than her surprising skill. A quick examination yielded the Exalt immediately. Standing in the very middle of the courtyard, a robed figure clad head to toe in voluminous grey robes stood with their arms outstretched. Rows and rows and rows of the dead warghosts lay spread across the grounds. Had she really killed so many? No wonder they were having trouble taking the town.

A deep purple and blue Anima rippled out from her and miniature Sorcerous runes danced about the glow. She was a Lunar. His education from his Deathlord had been thorough and now it was paying off. He didn't recognize the spell she was employing, though.

The color and shapes of the runes was surprisingly distracting. Dissent blinked and looked away...only to see the Regiments staring openly at the Exalted Sorcerer, as if hypnotized. Maybe they were. They were starting to react when the reinforcing soldiers of the Minotaur moved to repel them but it was a slow, ungainly response.

Standing next to the Sorcerer stood Felissin Varamunjiroro, a Fair Folk Noble and Cataphract of known skill and fame in the South. As he was secretly their primary objective in today's mission, Dissent was pleased that he wouldn't have to tear the whole place apart looking for him. A quick glance told him that the Faerie would not likely protect the Lunar Sorcerer, which made his next action certain.

Dissent plowed through the defending ranks, the royal embroidered robes of the Lion fanning out behind him as like the veil of death.

The robed figure's hood lifted toward him, revealing a light creamy green silk veil beneath with a printed butterfly-like image that almost seemed a mask. With startling speed, the Exalt lunged to the left, rolling across the courtyard and coming up in a ready stance against the town's wall. Now that her arms were down, Dissent could make out enough of a figure to realize she was a woman. Who was she, though?

"Most Esteemed Spear of the South," Dissent bowed low before the Faerie Noble, just as the First and Forsaken Lion had taught him. "I would beseech an audience with one of your inestimable skill but it would seem you have a prior appointment?" He nodded significantly at the robed Sorcerer.

"I do. Perhaps the two of you could negotiate priority?" The Cataphract chuckled in a musical, edgy way that evoked an image of chiming bells with razors bristling across their surface.

"Of course, Lord Varamunjiroro." Dissent flexed his hands, cracking his soulsteel knuckles. He relished how the sound made every soldier in hearing range wince.

Dissent charged forward, his great legs churning up the dirt of the courtyard with each stride. Coming upon the Lunar, he seemed to loom over her. Did she even come to his chest?

Silver chains suddenly lashed out from her sleeves, shooting across the space between them with shocking speed. As fast as he noticed them, the ends caught his hands and the shiny links wrapped around the dark metal of his fists. She jerked savagely, Essence flexing the metal, and any other Abyssal might have been pulled from his feet.

Dissent was not the fastest Abyssal to walk Creation or the Underworld. There was no question in his mind, though, that he was the strongest. The terrific tug rocked him but it could not bring him down. His muscles bunched and he yanked back. Her chains whipped back off his hands, cutting her free before she was pulled into reach.

He laughed scornfully at her and shook his fingers, as if shaking away pain.

The chains coiled across the ground, moving sinuously, as the Lunar stood there staring. The silvery metal resonated with her royal purple Anima and the moonsilver seemed more alive with tension than she was. Around them, the Regiments were beginning to secure Isis Minor, but neither gave the troop movements any notice.

Dissent lifted his boot and slammed it upon the ground, channeling a Hungry Earth Strike into the tightly packed dirt. A great crack opened up, breaking its way to drop her into an abyss. One of her chains swung up and wrapped around a second-story support beam of a nearby house. The Lunar pulled herself off the ground with a single effortless motion. Dissent jumped after her and took her other chain fully in the face as she lighted atop the roof.

The metal cracked into his cheek and bounced off as if it had hit a cliff of granite. His head rang from the impact but it hadn't done any serious harm, thanks to his Charms and the Enthralled Chains. Dissent hit the ground, rolled and came back on his feet, if not quite as graceful as his opponent.

"You can't win," he growled softly, knowing the tales of the Lunar and their senses. "I'm a Deathknight, in the bloom of my power, and it's been a year since any but a Deathlord could stand against me in battle."

"But I don't wish to fight you," she said, just as softly. His Fivefold Sensory Exercise was the only reason he caught the whispery words. "We're not supposed to be fighting, don't you know?"

"Nothing living wishes to die but everything does. Everything," he said, carefully enunciating all three syllables. "I'm going to catch you, Lunar. I'm going to rip your heart out. Now, later, doesn't matter. It's as certain as the Moon you worship."

"Once wasn't enough?" she said bitterly, a sound of heartbreak that paused him even in his first step forward.

"What?" he asked.

In answer, she came off the roof in a whirling storm of silvery death. Her chains tore buildings, ground and loyal troops apart with equal ease and then they came for him. His hands were a blur of soulsteel as he tried desperately to block every link of moonsilver. Her Charm imbued the chains with some kind of unnatural Essence, a kind he'd never seen before, and all he could tell was that if it caught up to him, he might not survive it after all.

But then she landed in front of him and he was still standing. Lines of darkness ran from the Abyssal and his shadow. Then, it stood in front of the recovering Lunar and, a split second later, he was there as well.

One powerful hand seized her throat. The other grabbed her by the waist. He lifted her off the ground without strain and thought about ripping her in half. She hardly weighed more than the Enthralled Chains that both burdened him and made him stronger than anything should be.

"I've never had a Lunar," Dissent snarled. "I wonder what you taste like? I wonder how easily you would break. The First and Forsaken Lion doesn't like prisoners, you know. He'd rather I just kill you right here. But part of me thinks it'd be fun to torture you until you served me, body, spirit and soul."

"Once I did," she croaked weakly. The veil was pulled tautly across her face and, through it, he could only make out the visage of a legendary beauty. "I'm already broken, Chance. Don't you remember? Don't you?"

"What?" he asked again, as again the Lunar stopped making sense.

"Don't you?" she growled, shuddering in his hands. "All I ever wanted was to make you happy, Chance. I was your Dragon but you...you were the monster. You ruined my life, you bastard! You killed...you killed our whole family. You didn't even leave one of our sons or daughters alive. How...how could you?"

Great sobs choked their way past his grip on her throat. And then Dissent realized she'd dropped from his grip to lie weeping at his feet. His hands hung loosely at his side...as he remembered...


	9. Chapter 9

_...when her husband had betrayed her. Stupid animal. He'd sided with the Sidereals._

_Taking Chances perched among the statues of the temple to Mela. That still made her laugh. The Immaculate Philosophy was such a pathetic front, though she would admit to a grudging respect. The Sidereal had learned their lesson well from the example of Ya'moire. Build your own religion, convince them that your way was the only true way, and you had an army of fanatics who would never falter. _

_Below her, in the crossway, the Golden Dragon walked. Behind him walked several Sidereal, the stinks of their astrology thick upon them. Taking Chances found it a little harder than usual to concentrate on them. They'd done something to themselves, she thought. Something that made them forgettable. She knew all mention of their existence had been disappearing from Creation for a century now but this was the first time she'd seen the effect so pronounced._

_Interesting. If she could master that trick, there would be no end to the revenge she could exact._

_So her husband was still with the Sidereals. Taking Chances could have forgiven almost anything of the Gold Dragon but that. Her Lunar mate and husband of 2000 years had, in the end, supported those who had put her entire Exaltation to death. Even her Circle._

_Hierarch Ya'moire, killed when the Joybringers had put the Deliberative to death. Of course they'd killed her first. The Head of the Deliberative was too strong to dare risk her escape. Seville, she'd heard he died somewhere out in the West, and even the Faerie hadn't been able to help him. Given how he moped over Ya'moire, it was probably just as well. He hadn't been worthy of his Exaltation._

_Kyvath...they were still telling the stories of how his own army committed suicide to show their abhorrence of his perceived sins. Because of their example, the fool had actually been dumb enough to get rid of Gold Revelation, the artifact that made him invincible. He'd let himself die. He had never been the true warrior his predecessor, Ensorcelled Beauty of Death's Deliverer, had been._

_And of course, there was Nocturne Iridescence, the unquestionably greatest Sorcerer of the First Age and the inventor of Necromancy. Her body had been found, the evidence had pointed to her husband, Padrick Ganan, but Taking Chances didn't believe it. Nothing could kill that woman. Nothing. She'd bet against herself if they ever came to blows._

_Either way, the Golden Dragon had been complicit. Taking Chances almost killed him in Yu-Shan 90 years ago but he'd walked too far into the Forbidden Manse of Ivy and her Charms had warned her that she wouldn't get out if she didn't leave right then. For a century, she'd waited for a chance to get him back. Waited for a word, a sign, a breath that would tell her that her husband had left Heaven to come back after her. Maybe he'd bring his Sidereal friends. That was fine, she was aching to pay them back too._

_She had thought putting every living descendent of theirs to death would have been enough bait to draw him. No dice. Then she'd killed all his friends and family. She'd smeared his reputation until the Shogunate cursed the name of the Golden Dragon and reviled him even more thoroughly than the other cowardly Lunar who'd fled. Still nothing._

_"I know you're here, Chance." The deep rumble of the Golden Dragon was music to her ears, a long-missed caress. She'd had Dragon-Blooded lovers aplenty in the last century, even a husband or two, but there was nothing like your own Lunar. That's why he had to die first. The sooner and more certain he was dead, the sooner he could be reborn into a new man, one she would be able to bend and twist from the beginning._

_That's what you had to do to animals. Train them, discipline them, punish them, until they never defied you again. Oh, she would too. Maybe she'd pull the wings off the Star-Children until then, to kill the time. Might be fun._

_"How did you find me so easily?" she asked. "I changed my scent, you know." There was a thousand tricks she could have pulled, voice misdirection, evasion and escape. But she was getting bored. She was the Inspector of the Night, the greatest Night Caste who'd ever lived. And she was tired of running when all she wanted to do was see how much blood she could rip from her husband's body._

_"You changed your scent...but not the one that binds you to one who couldn't have known better," her Lunar said, sighing heavily. The golden scales rippled across his body as his muscular arms tensed involuntarily. Taking Chances looked past him, looked past the half dozen Sidereal with him, and saw Navia. Her own daughter!_

_"I should have known," Taking Chances laughed with malefic bitterness. She fell from the statutes to land in front of the man she'd borne dozens of children to. "All the Charms of the Night Caste but no one ever thought to find a way to fool a Lunar's Blood-Kin Sense. No one ever thought they'd need to."_

_"Not even you," he said, grief carved across his face. "I loved you, wife. But you're a murderer. How many people still fear your name? How many mortals have you killed? How many Sidereal? ...how many Lunar?"_

_"Millions," she grinned. "Over a thousand officials, if you want to know. 4 Sidereal, though I'm hoping to improve that tonight, maybe an even 10? And 4 Lunar. Your whole Pack."_

_"Mother, don't!" The young teenaged girl looked frightened out of her wits. She should be. Taking Chances saw and grimaced at the field of stars in her only surviving child's eyes. They were green. Navia had been born with blue, like her Dragon-blooded father._

_"Scratch that, lover," she said to the Golden Dragon but still looking at Navia. "Better make that 11 Sidereal. Right under my own nose, huh?"_

_"I'm going to kill every last one of you...and then I think I'm going after Jupiter." Taking Chances laughed. "Even the Incarna aren't invulnerable. Heh, we should know, we killed their creators. And I think it's time the Gods learned who the real powers in Creation are and that they should keep their damned hands off my children."_

_"Chance..." her husband whispered, in a voice that begged her to stop. Perhaps a tiny corner of her wanted to yield to that voice, a corner that remembered what it had been like to love. But a river of passion, of altruism and hope, could never quench the ocean of hate inside her._

_Faster than anything in Creation could move, Taking Chances caught her husband by the throat. Her fingers exerted all the strength she had and his windpipe collapsed, blood spilled through ruptured flesh, and she squeezed until his head came off._

_"I love you, my Dragon," she whispered to the horrified head she cradled in her head. "Sleep well. Because when you wake, you'll be mine all over again..."_

"Void curse you!" Dissent screamed and he realized he was still standing over the weeping form of his Lunar mate. He had a wife now, where once he'd been a woman with a husband, but the similarity was too disturbingly similar for him to brush it off. The memory...Pasiap, what had he done?

**Pasiap**? the Whispers snarled in his mind. **There is no Pasiap. Only the Void**!

Dissent's eyes cleared and he looked down at his defeated wife. His mouth tasted of ash and he reveled in the sensation, at a new and unique source of pain. Every wound, every injury was one more chance to transcend what he'd been.

"Get up," he said without emotion.

"I didn't remember," she sobbed beneath the hood of the robe, concealed from his sight. "I didn't remember until I saw you. Luna...why? I'm supposed to love you. I've hated the last 40 years in Heaven and all that kept me going was the hope that I would find my Solar someday. You...you're supposed to be my dream come true. Why?" The raw agony of her words brought a smile to his face.

"Because life is meaningless when everything dies," Dissent said grimly. "What's your name?"

"Heart-Wrought Silver," she said, her voice choked up.

"Stand up, Heart-Wrought Silver."

Slowly, she placed her hands on her knees, straightened, and stood with obvious effort. The hood of her robe angled up and the veiled face tilted toward him, the green silk sticking wetly to the face beneath.

Dissent reached up and pulled off her veil. An inhumanly beautiful face was revealed, with skin of purest silver, hair finer than the chains of Luna that had vanished back up her sleeves, lips darker and deeper than heart's blood. Dissent, who had never truly lusted for a woman, lusted for this one. On her cheek was an inky-black mark, shaped like a woman's kiss of lipstick.

The Abyssal sighed at the Lunar...and then his hands slammed around her neck again. She tried to cry out but could only choke futilely at the inexorable pressure. Dissent lifted her off the ground and marveled at how hard it was going to be to break her neck.

"I'm not doing this because Taking Chances killed you this way," Dissent whispered in her ear. "I'm doing this...as a favor to you. I'm sorry I treated you so badly before, my Dragon. Now, go to sleep. The next time I find you...I really am going to break you until there is nothing in your eyes but the Void. Until Creation burns out and we burn out with it."

Dissent growled with pleasure as he felt her spine creak. Then she let go of his hands and touched his arms.

Where her fingers touched, an icy ache ran up his forearms. Dissent gasped as the foreign Essence invaded him, shooting through every nerve fiber to reach his heart, his brain, his every vital function. In the mind of the Abyssal who had once had the name of Mnemon Matthias, the truth emerged like soulsteel from the forge. Dissent, slave of He Who Holds in Thrall, was enslaved by her Charm.

Heart-Wrought Silver willed his arms to let her go and so he did. Her will drove him to pick her up in his arms and cradle her to his chest.

"I have plans for her. Secure this place. I will return." The words were not ones he meant to speak but he spoke them anyway. He realized that the battle was over, that the Lion's forces had won. Yet he'd lost. The Lieutenant saluted him crisply and went about ordering on the poisoning of the oasis.

Dissent walked out of Isis Minor, out into the desert, and deep into the sandy wilderness. As he walked, he quietly informed the Whispers of what had been done to him and where he could be found. It was not a certain method but it was the only option he had.

"I'm sorry, husband," Heart-Wrought Silver said in his arms. "I'm sorry Heaven was right. Everything I learned in the Forbidden Manse of Ivy was true after all. Your kind really are monsters."

He could only look at her because she let him. Then he stopped behind a sand dune and put her down, kneeling next to her.

"You are going to die out here, husband," she said. The beauty of her face cut him to the bone when she looked at him. Her Anima shone fully! How could she still be disguised? That couldn't really be her natural face, could it? "I can't allow something like you to hurt more people. I remember what you did in the First Age. You'd do worse this time if you could, wouldn't you? You wouldn't even deny it if I let you."

She shook her head, her eyes brimming with tears. Then she leaned into him and kissed him gently. The bruises at her throat were already fading, he noticed, right before she pushed him back in the sand.

Moonsilver chains spilled across her fingers. Like a snake, it slid off her hand, touched his neck and coiled about it. Her fingers clenched and the chain clenched with it, abruptly cutting off his air.

Dissent gagged, helpless under her Charm. Tears fell on his face from the Lunar above him. Improbably, they itched.

"I'm sorry, Chance," she said, swallowing hard to get the words out. She bared her teeth at him in a grimace of predatory fury and the chains tightened even more. "I know what it's like to suffer with no one to save you. I promise, it will be as quick as I can make it."

Her perfect cheeks flushed and streams of water trickled from her eyes despite her glare. The chain around his neck laxed...then fell away entirely. Dissent gasped for breath, glad that her Charm gave him that much freedom.

Heart-Wrought Silver bowed her head, concealing her face beneath her hood, and sobbed for several long minutes. When she looked up, her eyes were hard again. The colors were strangely reversed, he realized, so that her eyes looked like a lake of black with chips of ice floating in the still water.

"I can't...I can't kill you. I won't kill you, Chance, for two reasons. I'm no murderer and I won't have my husband be the first man I kill." She bent and snatched her veil from his hand. He'd forgotten he was holding it.

"Secondly...there may be a slim ray of hope for you. You were someone glorious once, Chance. For the sake of your soul, for the sake of us, I will give you a chance just as slender as that hope. I'm leaving you here, to meet your Destiny beneath the Sun you defied. Seek Him in prayer, my husband, I give you that much. If He can find it in Him to forgive you...then maybe I can too."

She gave him a tiny smile, a tremulous thing full of wonder. It was the most innocent thing Dissent had ever seen, a smile that spoke of a depthless faith that good would win out. It was unexpectedly painful, for hope had abandoned him years ago. To see it now, directed his way...it hurt.

With that last smile, she turned and walked off into the desert.

Dissent lay in the sun and realized he still couldn't move. Her last thought to him had been to remain perfectly still...and he couldn't overcome the order. He couldn't break free!

So much for her faith and hope!

The Abyssal screamed at the chains in his mind and bent all his considerable willpower toward breaking free of it. The harder he pressed, the more he felt the bars of the cage she'd imprisoned him in, but they wouldn't give. He'd never met a Charm like this. Without understanding it, he couldn't hope to overcome her strange power.

**Break free, Dissent**. the Whispers demanded. **Remember what you **are.

I am the Fulcrum Hammer. Dissent's mind hardened into diamond with the effort. I can't die.

Sudden revelation swept through him. He really couldn't die! The Maidens themselves had consented to his Prophecy when they'd brought about this Pivot Child he would someday fight. In order for the Pivot Child Prophecy to be valid, he had to survive to oppose her, didn't he?

Even Creation's Destiny couldn't allow him to die.

So he wouldn't.

With renewed vigor, Dissent bore himself against the Lunar's Charm, pushing inch by inch until it suddenly broke. Sitting up, he gasped for breath and rubbed his scalp against the crushing headache that descended on him.

He slammed his fist into the sand and stood. Even with Charms, he couldn't see her now. It had taken too long to overcome hers. Perhaps he could track her but she was beyond the scope of his orders...and he had a job to do.

Either way, he was still standing. Dissent wouldn't insult himself by saying he still lived. But breathed, yes, moved, yes. Hated, oh yes.

This would not be the last time his wife saw him. And now he had a taste of her Charm. **The Essence was flavored with Star-magic**. the Whispers told him and he listened. **Now that you've broken it, she'll never chain you again**. Dissent grinned, looking forward to the next time. His hands ached to hold her neck once more.

Dissent patted his robes back into place, carefully tying the braids in the fourfold manner one did for the honored dead. He walked from that place and looked out over the sea of dunes. Far to the east, Isis Minor was beginning to burn.

It was time to get back. The First and Forsaken Lion wanted a meeting with that Faerie Noble, after all. One of Dissent's rank was called for in the least, when the Fair Folk Cataphract in question could help negotiate their interest in aiding a Faerie invasion of Creation.

One way or another, they would tear this world apart. Dissent began to run toward Isis Minor. If he was lucky, there might even be a few prisoners left to kill.


	10. Chapter 10

**The 12th Day of Resplendent Fire, 768 in the Year of Our Empress**.

"Is this really the Blessed Isle?" Ledaal Vira asked, looking about with sad eyes. Even dematerialized, she was palely beautiful, more so thanks to the Necromancies Dissent knew. But the tragic cloud that had come over her since her death had only grown deeper with the passing years.

"It is," the Fervent Dissent of the Grave's Embrace said and he shuddered as he said it. He was a big man, over seven feet tall, and his physique was undeniably massive. Dissent's hands were forged soulsteel, as big as the rest of him, and the Enthralled Chains crisscrossed his body beneath the large resplendently royal robes of the First and Forsaken Lion.

He was not the most terrifying Abyssal in the Underworld. But only the First and Forsaken Lion had stronger arms and Dissent was wise and old and powerful in the ways of Essence, beyond the reckoning of other Abyssal. That was one of the reasons he had been sent.

The blight of Creation burned across his senses in the South, and that was in the middle of the desert. Here, the stink of life forced itself down his throat. The soulsteel linked across his frame and the soulsteel fused to the bones of his arms were a reassuring chill against Creation's dominion.

"I wish I could see it with living eyes again," Vira sighed. The dead Earth Immaculate still wore her robes, as Dissent had decided long ago there was little point in preventing her. She'd once been his teacher in his youth but Vira had given up her soverignty at the same time she'd lost her life at his hands. At the moment, she seemed almost alive though. The ghostly Dragon-Blooded was more animated than she'd been since enslaving her with his Threefold Chaining of the Living. It pleased him. He wondered if it should.

"You exist here by my will alone," Dissent said sternly. "Be grateful. I could abandon you in the wasteland of the living world, in a place with no Shadowland and nothing to keep the Immaculates from destroying you. I still could."

"It would be a blessing," Vira said with surprising venom.

Dissent glanced back at his other companions. Vira's Hungry Ghost followed him as his guard, as it had for years. The other was a more remarkable being.

"As long as the Immaculate's Necromancy binds you, your soul is consigned to Oblivion, should you die," observed the Relentless Maiden of Unruly Pride and Roaring Fury. She was stunning, inhumanly beautiful in a cold statuesque manner. A man might mistake her for a beauty of an Age, if he didn't look too close. Inspection would reveal to anyone that there was nothing human left behind her seemingly serene eyes. Clad in soulsteel mail, the Dusk Caste wore a Daiklave without the self-possession so typical of duelists. Perhaps that was because she had spent a significant portion of her life commanding men rather than directly killing them.

"Of course, Maiden," Vira said, her neck dropping submissively. Dissent liked that. She was the only piece of his past left now and, like all the things that mattered, she had to be broken for him to keep her around.

"Thank you, Lieutenant," he said. Her eyes flashed at the mention of her once mortal rank but she'd started it by calling him an Immaculate. It was petty but sometimes such things gave them an odd source of familiarity. To a man and woman who had foresworn their very names, any history was a treasured sliver of identity.

"We're coming up on the town," the Relentless Maiden said.

"Yes," Dissent agreed. "Which is why I want you to hold here."

"I don't understand, Dissent. Why are we even here?" The Maiden put her slim hands on those fantastic hips of hers and gave him a coldly expectant look. "The Imperial City is to the northeast, according to our maps. Why have we strayed so far off course?"

"Because They tell me to," Dissent answered. "We are here because there's something They want me here for."

"I'll wait," the Relentless Maiden said. She stretched and Dissent looked away. Beautiful or not, a century and a half of Immaculate life made some kinds of behaviors reflexive, especially when they came to bosoms of that quality. "Try to stay out of trouble. I'm on a schedule."

Fervent Dissent of the Grave's Embrace left the other Abyssal behind, trailed now only by his two ghosts. Vira hummed a soft tune from his childhood, a nostalgic air of centuries long ago lost. The Hungry Ghost was silent. And Dissent himself tried to ignore her melody as he slowly walked into the town.

It was called Lonesome Thought, or at least he thought it was. The last time Dissent had been here was 74 years ago when he was still on circuit. This place was a resort for House Cynis and the natural beauty of the surroundings were doubtlessly quite pleasant for them. Maybe that's why it smelled so much here, all that ugly life everywhere.

"Father, thank goodness you're here!"

A dozen young men ran up and surrounded him. Dissent looked down at the throng with wary eyes. His Charms would protect his identity and appearance here, as they obviously were, but these people saw him as an Immaculate...one they were expecting.

Go with them. the Whispers said in his mind.

"Yes, I'm here. Bring me to the trouble." He didn't know why he said those words but he felt the Neverborn guidance on his mouth. Dissent hurried after them, trailed by his invisible ghosts.

The streets of the Cynis resort were oddly vacant. Dissent saw men and women peeking out through shuttered windows and he wondered. The Realm was not tolerant of its peasant stock avoiding work. What had happened here that frightened everyone this much? Perhaps plague?

"She's on the House grounds, Father," one of the men on his right said. "They're holding her in Cynis Marena's spirit-summoning outbuilding. It's the only place solidly built enough to keep her in and we're not sure it's enough either. Thank you for getting here so quickly, Father, we thought it would be at least another day before you arrived."

"I want you to clear the grounds for me," Dissent said through the guidance of the Whispers. "Keep people away from the grounds at any cost."

"Of course, Father."

"How does it feel, Dissent?" Vira asked in his ear. The dematerialized woman's breath soothed the burning anger of the living world. "These people need help and here you are, the answer to their prayers. Do you remember what it was like?"

"Shut up!" he said harshly. "I would have pressed on in service for centuries more if you hadn't hunted me, Vira. I am what the Realm made me." The words rang falsely in Dissent's ears but he ignored it. No matter the choices he'd made, the Realm was culpable. The Immaculate Order, the Scarlet Empress...even Pasiap Himself bore responsibility for their Heretic.

The grounds of the Cynis manor were spacious and well-tended, as he would expect in a resort town. It sat on a hill overlooking the town below and it afforded a very large view of the Blessed Isle's polluted landscape. The mansion itself was a large stone building, which was suggestive in and of itself. The Dragon-Blooded favored stone where their Animas were likely to light. Dissent didn't want to think about what Cynis did in a pleasure-house that could ignite their Anima.

Slightly away from the stone building was a smaller structure. It was built of the same thick granite used in the manor but its surface was bespeckled with arcane etchings instead of the elaborate flags and heraldic crests that decorated the main house. Dissent made for the door, Hungry Ghost on his left, Vira on his right.

He kicked it with one foot and was astonished to see it hold. The Cynis household must have taken great pains to make sure nothing got in through that door...or out through it. He knew a Charm or two that would bypass this barrier handily enough, but that simply wasn't his style. Dissent drew back his soulsteel fists and struck the door double-handed.

The door exploded in a shower of wood fragments already rotten from his touch.

Dissent ducked the overhead and stepped fearlessly into the room. The heavier debris had landed but a choking cloud of dust cut visibility, thanks to the decaying effects of his body. It seemed to be stronger lately. Waking in the morning to dead grass surrounding him was nothing unexpected but sometimes his feet left discolored vegetation in his wake. That was strange, he thought.

The room held a variety of shelves full of arcane equipment and tools. Dissent cast a contemptuous glance over the trappings of Dragon-Blooded summoning. Though the Cynis who kept this workshop probably had a century of experience on him, his understanding and power already far outstripped hers. The summoning circle on the floor looked interesting but ultimately ordinary.

There was no one around. Where was the prisoner? Why had the Whispers led him to this empty room? Not quite empty. Dissent spotted the mouse in a corner with a smirk.

Not a mouse. the Whispers said.

"It can't be..." Dissent said in disbelief. The mouse seemed to be perfectly ordinary... except for a faint black mark on its cheek. A mark that looked like a woman's kiss.

"It is," Heart-Wrought Silver said, shedding the form of the animal. The woman was shrouded head to toe in that voluminous gray robe he'd last seen her. In place of a face was a green silk veil with a gold butterfly print worked into it. Her gloved hands were folded but Dissent remembered the moonsilver chains concealed up her sleeves.

This was his Lunar Mate, the woman his soul told him he should love. This was the Golden Dragon reborn, his First Age predecessor's murdered spouse in a new guise just as he was. This was the woman who had magically chained his spirit and left him for dead in the desert.

"You left me in the South to die! I could kill you now!" Dissent snarled, taking a jerky step forward. His soulsteel hands twanged with the strain as he tightened them into irresistible fists. The urge to act on his threat pounded in his blood. He wanted her dead so badly his teeth ached.

"You've certainly had practice at it," she said coolly. Dissent's anger diminished to a smolder at the reminder and he smirked grimly at her. Heart-Wrought Silver lived now because Dissent's former incarnation had murdered her husband, just as he had almost done. "Killing is too easy for you." She was so much calmer than the last time they'd met.

"That is because death is the natural end of life and all things fall toward it," Dissent said. "Life is pain or suffering because people resist inevitability."

"Spare me your Deathlord rhetoric, Chance," Heart-Wrought Silver said, sounding bored. It was odd to hear a name from her lips that had once been his. She was the only one who knew it, who remembered it. "Why...wait, why are you even here?"

"Why are you?" Fervent Dissent countered. It occurred to him that the question was at least as pertinent to her presence as it was to his own. "I came because this is where I'm supposed to be. What does that have to do with you?"

Everything. the Whispers said in his mind. Kill her. Kill her now. We want her dead! Kill her quickly before she speaks another word.

Dissent could hear Heart-Wrought Silver take a breath to answer. He almost attacked right then. A single clean hit to her torso would pulverize her ribs, stop her heart and prevent her from talking. The Neverborn's Will beat down upon him...but he hesitated.

She was a Lunar. She couldn't influence him or manipulate his mind with words. Dissent knew he was immune to her chaining Charm. What danger was there for him now? And he didn't want to kill her yet.

"So Fate brings us together," Heart-Wrought Silver sighed. "This is not where I'm supposed to be, Chance. This is the very last place in Creation I should be but I...I was a fool. To come back here and expect anything to be different."

"What?" He didn't understand. A spectral brush against his back reminded him that they were not alone and...oddly, that bothered him. Dissent turned his head back. "Wait for me outside. I can take care of myself." Vira looked worried for him but went. How touching, that the woman he'd murdered cared for him. He sneered at her back.

"Ghosts?" Heart-Wrought Silver asked in that cool voice. Dissent nodded and wished he could see her face. She frustrated him when all he had to go on was her voice and what passed for body language beneath that shapeless mass of a robe. "I was born here, Chance. And I wanted to...I don't know. See my mother, I suppose. See if there is any truth to my memories of this place. I guess I wanted to see if there was any trace of my existence here."

"How sentimental," Dissent remarked. "The man I used to be was born to House Mnemon. To Mnemon herself, actually. I have no desire to pay a visit to the ancestral manse as it were."

"How does it feel to be back on the Blessed Isle?" she asked. "How does it feel to be home?"

"Why are you asking me these questions?" Dissent countered. "Why are we even talking at all? While I'm at it, why haven't I caved in your skull for your treachery?"

"You jest, to speak of my treachery and not of your own," Heart-Wrought Silver said. Her voice was no longer cool but trembling. She paused to gather herself. Dissent watched, fascinated by the Lunar and the strange feelings she brought up in him. No wonder the Neverborn wanted her dead. They didn't want him feeling anything remotely human anymore. "The answer to all three is one and the same: We're married. I'm your wife."

Dissent took another step toward her and this time she stepped toward him. They met next to the summoning circle. She was so small, he realized. Her eyes would be just about level with his stomach. The Lunar's head leaned back as she looked up at him.

"Take your veil off," he commanded.

Heart-Wrought Silver's gloved hand reached up and pulled her veil down. The silk ran across the features of her face like a river of forest over the most amazing terrain. As it bared her features, Dissent's breath was tight in his chest. Somehow, he'd forgotten how impossibly beautiful she was.

"You know what?" she murmured.

"What?" he said, just as quietly.

"I don't even know your name."

"It's Matthias."

The rage of the Neverborn rose up inside Dissent, stabbing his heart with shocking pain. Agony broke the spell and he recoiled from the Lunar. Breathing heavily, he leaned against a shelf as his body burned with the forbidden name, with the name he'd promised to Them.

"That was the name of the man who was before. But I am the Fervent Dissent of the Grave's Embrace, Lunar. I am a Deathknight in service to the First and Forsaken Lion, to the Neverborn and to Oblivion. Make no mistake. I am your enemy."

"It's wrong, Dissent," Heart-Wrought Silver said, low and urgent. She didn't call him by that lost name, either. Dissent expected her to use the weapon he'd given her but she didn't. "Of all things in Creation, you and I cannot be enemies. I'm your Dragon. Don't you remember? I am for you."

"None of that means a damn thing against the Void," Dissent said, his voice as chilled as his heart. "So, you're here to see your family. Why are you locked in here? I would have at least a few mysteries about you solved before I put you to death."

"Years ago, I made the mistake of going to her and trying to convince her that I was her daughter," Heart-Wrought Silver said, her voice as cool again as his was now. "I was little more than a child then. But she remembered this mark." Her fingers traced the lipstick on her cheek. "Though I was disguised, she recognized it and attacked me. I could not strike her so they took me."

"A little fool in every way," Dissent said, grimly satisfied. "What now? An Immaculate comes to purify your soul?"

"No," Ledaal Vira said as she rushed into the building. "A Wyld Hunt comes to kill every trace of the Anathema here. They're right outside!"


	11. Chapter 11

Fervent Dissent darted to the door. He peeked out in time to see an arrow in midflight heading toward the building entrance, preceding a dozen Dragon-Blooded. Almost, he reached out to catch the shaft. Almost, he didn't notice the peculiar fiery Essence pulsing in the arrowhead.

He kicked off the brace of the door and dived across the room as the arrow shot inside, hit the wall...and detonated. Searing fire rushed across his body, setting his magnificent robes on fire and singeing him. Dissent growled in pain and rose, patting the flames out.

Heart-Wrought Silver lay beneath him and on her face was that smile again, the smile he'd only ever seen once. It was a smile of such innocent joy and pure happiness that it just about blinded him. Dissent was confused and honored at the same time...and that's when he realized why she smiled. Heart-Wrought Silver was beneath him. When that arrow came in, the first thing he'd done was cover her. To protect her.

The soulsteel knuckles of Dissent's right hand popped like the clockwork of a First Age Tower breaking suddenly. She jumped a little and got up beneath his glower. "Don't make any assumptions," he said darkly. "Now, we need to get out of here."

"We?" she asked, almost coyly. Dissent restrained his desire to groan. What was it about this woman that brought out feelings of...feelings he'd never felt before? Why did she have to push it in his face, for that matter? She would need killing much sooner than later if she kept acting that way.

"I counted a dozen at least, Heart-Wrought Silver. I may need you to help me cut my way through." Dissent glanced at Vira. "Stay safe." He looked at the Hungry Ghost ...and said nothing. They had an understanding.

"I'm ready," Heart-Wrought Silver said. Moonsilver chains shot out from her sleeves and coiled on the ground. Dissent's eyes narrowed at her artifact weapon and turned back to peer out the doorway. The Dragon-Blooded had disappeared from sight, oddly enough. What were they up to? They could only assail this structure from the front.

"**Lingering Whisper is with them**." That booming bass from behind could not possibly come from the Lunar. Dissent spun and his skin darkened to the lusterless gray of soulsteel as he activated his Perfection of Earth's Body.

"Heavenly Mother," Heart-Wrought Silver whispered, her head slumping forward. A gigantic golden lion too large to fit materially in this room stood behind her, his tail flicking forth to brush the back of her neck. Dissent's eyes widened as he recognized the significance of a dematerialized Celestial Lion, a God he'd only read about in ancient texts.

"Well, my Dragon. How do you rate such company?" he asked.

"**She earned it the first day I met her**," the Celestial Lion countered. "**And she has proven worthy every day since**."

"Bodyguarding a Lunar? Hardly a Heavenly Mandate, now is it?"

"**You know...NOTHING of Heaven!**" the Celestial Lion roared. Dissent tilted his head to the side as the force of the Lion's breath knocked his hood off and flattened his hair back.

"Your breath stinks of paradise," Dissent growled. "Now, what do you know about the forces outside?"

"**They're more than enough to kill you. They have a Toyumato-era Shogunate Essence Canon, Silver**," the Lion said, turning its great maned head to the Lunar. "**They only need to move it into position**."

"How bad is that?" Dissent asked.

"They can blast this whole building apart," Heart-Wrought Silver said. "And us with it. We have to get out of here."

"Stating the obvious," Dissent snarled. He turned away and closed his eyes. Through the Enthralled Chains, he found his link with the Whispers of the Neverborn and his thoughts sped toward Them. My Masters

You mock Our advice and with the same breath you call Us the Whispers howled in his mind. Dissent bore the pain because he deserved it. We hear you.

I need the Relentless Maiden of Unruly Pride and Roaring Fury. I need her to kill an Essence Cannon for me.

Your Destiny is not done, Fulcrum Hammer. The Voices laughed darkly. You will receive your aid. But remember your purpose!

"Did you hear me?" Heart-Wrought Silver continued to speak while his concentration returned to the world around him. "I can get us free, if you'll give me what I want."

"I'm touched you care," he said dryly. Dissent wasn't worried in the slightest about that cannon. If the Relentless Maiden didn't arrive in time for some reason, he could evade its attack no matter how big the explosion was. Vira could jump inside him with Mortal-Shadowing Technique and the Hungry Ghost...was more than capable of taking care of itself.

"You are my husband," Heart-Wrought Silver said. She looked faintly repulsed. "Even if you are a monster. I know that saving you from that Essence Cannon will mean more people are going to die, Dissent, so I want something from you."

"And what is that?" Dissent asked, not caring to conceal the amused contempt in his voice. Heart-Wrought Silver thought she could bargain from a position of strength? So she had a Celestial Lion for an ally. He had the Relentless Maiden and he knew which he put his trust in.

"Your ghost."

"No," he said. Vira gasped at the Lunar's words and let out a relieved sigh at his refusal. The sound made Dissent smile. That was more like the broken, submissive Vira he'd built out of his own hands for the past few years. "And she doesn't want to go with you anyway. Why trade one Anathema for another, after all?"

A humming vibration ran itself across Dissent's back, up and down his legs and it made the soulsteel rivets in his hands rattle. He looked out the doorway and saw that they had set up some kind of tripod, one housing a device that looked like a bizarre cross between a ship-mounted firedust cannon and a firecracker. Scores of men and women flocked around it, many of them Dragon-Blooded, and none of them got between the end of the weapon and the building it was pointed at.

"Time's up, Dissent," Heart-Wrought Silver said grimly. "Are you going to stay here and die or will you let me take you out of here?"

"I'm harder to kill than any building," Dissent said. The Lunar blinked in disbelief at his stubbornness and he smirked at her. Inwardly, he wondered. Why wasn't the Relentless Maiden already there? Of course, that fang of people out there was a bit much for even that Dusk Caste.

"But your ghost won't survive," the Lunar said. "You will lose her either way but if you come with me, at least you'll be unharmed." What a fool. How little she understood. On the other hand, he had an opportunity to learn more of her unique powers if he accepted her offer.

"Fine, it's a deal," Dissent said. He strode from the doorway and looked down at his Lunar mate. "Shall we?"

"Dissent, don't let her..." Ledaal Vira protested.

It was too late, even before the ghost spoke up. Heart-Wrought Silver grabbed his hand and her moonsilver chain from the opposite arm smashed into the granite wall. Dissent barely had time to seize Vira before he was improbably pulled, twisted, warped along the length of the chain and out the other side of the building.

Dissent landed heavily on the ground, Vira falling next to him. Heart-Wrought Silver brushed past them both with her Celestial Lion in tow. She looked one way, then another, and then she looked down at him.

"So, you going to lie there all day or do we want to get out of the blast radius?"

He laughed at her fearlessness and rose from the ground. Dissent's soulsteel hands lifted the intangible Vira to her feet as well. The Hungry Ghost stood next to them both, silent as always. Of course it was.

The humming vibration grew stronger and they ran for it. The Wyld Hunt was nowhere near them, owing to their desire to avoid being hit, and Dissent took full advantage of it as he sprinted. He wasn't as fast as any of the others but his strides were longer than theirs and his endurance inexhaustible. They reached the wall blocking the Cynis grounds from the rest of the town below and Dissent looked back just in time to watch the building explode.

His forearm sheltered his eyes but the shot debris stung his soulsteel-like skin. Dissent lowered his arm and gawked slightly at the outright crater in the grounds, roughly twice the size of where the building used to be. That Essence Cannon was comparable to the First and Forsaken Lion's field Siege Guns. He had no idea that the Realm had even one weapon of that power left.

"**I cannot stay**," the Celestial Lion said, regret weighing his deep voice down. "**I cannot break the Law**." The mighty spirit dashed through the wall and was gone.

"Lingering Whisper really wanted me dead," Heart-Wrought Silver said. She looked sad as she said it. "I thought we were beyond that."

"I know what I'd do to a man who tried to kill me," Dissent said indifferently. "So, what will it be?"

"I'm not a murderer," the Lunar said, stiffening. "I'm not a monster!" She bared her teeth as she said it and Dissent almost stepped back when he saw they'd lengthened into a set of sharp points. Her eyes turned reptilian and a sheen of gold spread like a passing wave across her skin, there and then gone.

"Look in the mirror," Dissent said. He fixed his gaze pointedly on her mouth. "You might find we're not too different. Now, you can go over the wall and run...or you can stand and fight. I don't know about you but I'm not letting them get away with this."

"That's a full Wyld Hunt, Dissent!" Heart-Wrought Silver gripped his arm suddenly. The feel of her fingers was a heated bliss, like the Spice Tents of the Delzahn. "No, that's more than a full Hunt and they have a Sidereal with them!"

"A Sidereal you say?" Dissent rubbed his chin and grinned. "I've always wanted to match blows with one. The First and Forsaken Lion told me they were the best Martial Artists in Creation."

"It's true," she said.

"Well, I'm the best in the Underworld. Let's see whose style wins!"

Dissent charged away from the wall. He brought up his Earth Dragon Form to match his Perfection of Earth's Body and he knew he was invincible between the two. As shouts went up among the Wyld Hunt, Dissent struck his soulsteel knuckles together and he laughed joyfully at the horror the shrieking metal and its sparks caused among his enemy.

"Hit him with the cannon!"

Two Dragon-Blooded swiveled the Essence Cannon around to point at him. The humming vibration began again...but Fervent Dissent refused to flinch. He snarled at them and poured on the speed, racing to reach them regardless of their gun.

The Relentless Maiden of Unruly Pride and Roaring Fury soared over the other wall like an ill-omened raiton. The slivered mass of soulsteel in her hands howled a sickly green and black, pulsing in time to the burning Anima around her. The Maiden's face was a caricature of rage and all the Dragon-Blooded were far too busy staring at him to see her. That was their doom.

She landed blade-first, bisecting the Essence Cannon. The sword hit whatever Essence reservoirs lay inside the ancient machinery and the gun detonated. As if time had nearly stopped, Dissent saw the white-hot shockwave pick up the Dragon-Blooded and the mortals like dead wood in a flood. In contrast, the Maiden was a suddenly black blur. The explosion passed through her and then she was there again, unharmed in the midst of the second crater on Cynis lands.

"For the Lion!" Dissent cried as he reached the first hunter.

"For his Majesty, the First and Forsaken Lion!" the Relentless Maiden echoed, whirling her daiklave across the back of her hand, wielding it and taking the head off a mortal in a single motion.

Carnage ensued.

Dissent's soulsteel fists pounded through armor, shields and swords to reach his prey. Force of the Mountain empowered each punch and a mortal died with every blow. A Dragon-Blooded came at him and Dissent simply punched him so hard that his body went right over the walls of the Cynis manor.

A Fire-Aspect came at him with twin swords, moving in the familiar patterns of the Fire Dragon Style. What a fool. Dissent knew more about the Immaculate Martial Arts than any Abyssal and he knew quite well how to defend against their techniques. He ignored the Dragon-Blooded's first attack and let the blade scald his side. It did little else since it was plain the Fire-Aspect was hoarding his strength for defense. Instead, Dissent struck with all his fury at the man.

The other sword snapped up and sparks rang from the jade blade. So Dissent hit him again. And again. And again. Each time, the Dragon-Blooded's sword met his hand with sparks. But with each punch, the Dragon-Blooded's Anima flared more hotly and fatigue cracked across his face. Until at last he could counter no more and Dissent killed him with a punch that broke his breastplate, his ribs, pulverized his heart and snapped his spine from the single blow.

Dissent spun about, laughing at the leeched power his hands had pulled from the dying man's soul, before he realized he was in trouble. A literal dozen of Dragon-Blooded ringed him. Beyond the circle, another ring blocked the Relentless Maiden. The Host grinned at him and flames danced from their weapons while smoke billowed from their feet.

"He is a master of the Earth Dragon Style," an Immaculate Monk said. The white jade tetsubo in his hands and the massive build so like Dissent's own marked him as a fellow practitioner. "Which can only mean..."

"That I'm the Heretic," Fervent Dissent said proudly. He flexed his arms and clenched his fists defiantly at the Heavens and their Dragon-Blooded Host. "And I'm stronger than you can imagine!

Dissent lifted his foot and slammed it into the ground, harder than any Immaculate had in the history of Creation. His Hungry Earth Strike cracked the ground open in every direction and he leaped high above the Dragon-Blooded as an eighth of the entire Cynis grounds collapsed beneath his Charm. Two arrows shot out from the crowd below and his Essence-enhanced reflexes twisted him out of the way of each bolt.

He landed in the fallen ruin of the lawn. As he walked out of it, Dissent spotted a Dragon-blooded buried neck-deep in the mess, struggling to get herself free. So he kicked the woman's head off. It spun end over end out of sight, leaving him with the memory of the shocked look on that face. The sight brought a smile to his.

A staff cracked him in the back of the head and the blow almost knocked him out. Dissent fell heavily against the side of the crater and only his fighting reflexes pushed his body out of the way of a follow-up blow. He kicked his foot into the ground and shot backwards, up the crater wall, and came down on his feet.

Staff in hand, a single man stood in the middle of the destruction. He was wreathed in a silvery-gray set of interlocking plates, arranged in some complicated design. The Sidereal, for he obviously wasn't a Dragon-Blooded, had purple eyes on his helmless face. Purple for the color of Saturn, the Maiden of Endings. What kind of powers might one of Her Chosen have?

"That was an incredible hit," Dissent admitted, rubbing the back of his head. "You won't get another."

Somewhere inside of his soul, Dissent felt a sudden pull. He looked away from the Sidereal, back toward walls, and saw Heart-Wrought Silver with her chain wrapped around Ledaal Vira's neck. The ghost struggled feebly against it but was obviously helpless. Anger relit inside Dissent's heart and he jumped the entire length of his crater.

"What are you doing!" Dissent demanded as he charged toward the Lunar, leaving the Sidereal staring incredulously at his fleeing opponent. A body fell across his path and he spared a look backwards. It gave him the chance to watch the Relentless Maiden break a jade tetsubo in half just before her daiklave kept going to cut the Immaculate using it in half too. There was no pleasure on her face, only a deep satisfaction. What a fanatic. She'd been crazy when she was a mortal so she shouldn't surprise him now.

"You gave me your word" Heart-Wrought Silver shouted. "I'm freeing her!"

"You actually thought I was going to give you Vira? You ARE a fool." Dissent stopped up short and shook his head at the Lunar. She was his most prized possession and there was no way Heart-Wrought Silver could break his Void Circle Necromancy. Now that he knew she wasn't going to kill Vira, he could ignore her and get back to killing that Sidereal.

"Dissent, behind you!" Heart-Wrought Silver cried out in front of him. He turned his head to look at her, saw nothing, realized what she'd said and looked back over his left toward the Maiden. There was still nothing to see there. What was she babbling about?

Then that staff cracked into his head again, from the right. Dissent reeled and the staff went between his legs, tripping him and throwing him to the ground. He saw spots now but he'd live. The Abyssal rolled and came back on his feet in time to see the Sidereal sprinting at him, moving really, really fast. Dissent waited, let the staff come...and then he caught it with his Weapon-Breaking Defense Technique. His free soulsteel hand shrieked as the metal tightened into a fist, right before he smashed it into the staff. The silvery-gray weapon snapped in two.


	12. Chapter 12

"Damn you!" the Sidereal hissed, throwing the pieces to the ground.

Dissent knocked the Saturn man's fist aside and flinched as some kind of Essence afterimage of the martial artist half-separated from his body and kicked him in the face. Dissent's adversary slammed three fast punches into his stomach but he blocked the following roundhouse kick from the ghostly copy. What was that? It wasn't really a ghost, Dissent had seen enough to know what one looked like. Could it be that the man had mastered a technique for animating his lower soul?

Dissent's soulsteel fists couldn't deliver a Stillness of Stone or Avalanche Method so he kept his hands moving defensively and tried to land a kick to slow the Sidereal down with those Charms. His adversary would have none of it and he spun like a dancer away from every attempt. Dissent grunted as he took a blow for everyone he blocked. Fighting the Sidereal was like fighting two men who only had to dodge for one. He was getting tired of this.

So, Dissent took a full-force kick laden with some painful Charm and tackled the Saturn man. They didn't roll because the Abyssal didn't let them. He used every bit of advantage his extraordinarily tall, heavily muscular body gave him, broken the Sidereal's defenses and then Dissent got his hands around the man's throat.

The Sidereal shouted something incomprehensible just before Dissent squeezed his throat shut. Suddenly, that Essence ghost rose almost entirely out of the man's body. Dissent had just enough time to think of his Ghost-Grounding Blow when the Essence image shouted too. Abruptly, its hands became a hundred and a thousand simultaneous blows landed across every inch of his skin. Dissent was flung skyward by the barrage of hits. Pain wracked him and he knew at once he'd been gravely hurt.

A moonsilver chain caught Dissent in descent.

Softly, gently, Heart-Wrought Silver lowered him to the ground. The vantage point gave him time to appreciate the sight of the Lunar and the Sidereal facing off. It also gave him time to gawk at the river of gore sluiced across the landscape. The Relentless Maiden couldn't use her left arm but only six Dragon-Blooded remained standing...out of two dozen, to say nothing of the hundred very, very dead mortals. A sliver of fear gripped Dissent's stomach at the sight of the Roaring Fury of the Maiden. He was the First and Forsaken Lion's strongest Abyssal because he was a Martial Arts powerhouse, a trained spy and the best Sorcerer, if not Necromancer, in his Majesty's employ. One-dimensional as the Maiden might be, he was nonetheless forced to reevaluate how deadly she'd grown.

"You can't be siding with that blasphemous creature," the Sidereal said as Dissent settled down. The moonsilver chain coiled around his chest protectively and he shuddered at a strange resonance in the Enthralled Chains bound across his body.

"He's my husband, Lingering Whisper." Heart-Wrought Silver had donned her green and gold butterfly veil and she was the same mysterious Sorcerer he'd first met in the desert. Her Anima gleamed around her, a rippling pure purple with white edges. "And you tried to kill me as well."

"Lunar do not belong in Heaven," he said. The purple-eyed man in armor straightened like a proud peacock and leered at her. A magenta halo surrounded him and Dissent had the satisfaction of knowing that he'd forced the man's expenditure of Essence. "Especially not ones so taken with the rut that they'd breed with the dead."

"You're disgusting, Whisper," Heart-Wrought Silver said coldly. "You would make a better Lunar than I. Your bloodlust, your crudity...you're so revolting it's a miracle you still get invited to the Bureau's social functions."

"We're not in the Bureau now, bitch." Lingering Whisper rolled his neck, popping it. "Out here, there's no Scripture of the Crimson Silver, is there? No Luna popping in to see you every year. To think an Incarna would actually see you in person! You're a goddamned blasphemy and, out here, you're fair game."

"Don't they teach you how to kill?" Fervent Dissent groaned as he got back on his feet. His Charms had stopped the Sidereal's Essence ghost from killing him but it hadn't stopped it by much. "Or is the only thing you're good for is talk?"

"Oh, the Heretic himself! Kindly roll over and die like the sacrilegious beast you are. Or do you need another lesson from my Starmetal Soul?"

"Yeah, I think I do." Dissent clenched his fists and took pleasure at Lingering Whispers' flinch when the cracking knuckles rang like half a dozen anvils falling on each other. "Better make it quick. You're running out of toy soldiers."

The Sidereal glanced behind him and Dissent shot straight up into the air. Black and red light skated across the metallic surface of his hands as he brought them together. He dived on Lingering Whisper, fists first, spinning like a top. The Essence ghost rose from his adversary's body and their fists met.

Dissent was thrown backwards, end over end, but he spotted one of Heart-Wrought Silver's chains writhing in the air and he caught the links with his foot. With a feat possible only through his own Black Exaltation, Dissent kicked off the airborne chain, hit the ground in a run, swung down and then up into a magnificent uppercut.

The Starmetal Soul, or whatever it was, burst forth intangibly from the Sidereal's chest and time seemed to slow again. The Essence ghost shouted incoherently as it rained another volley of punches down on him. They hit, they hurt but still his fist came on. The punches stopped going for his body and started concentrating on his hand, trying to halt the inevitable mountain of force heading for the Sidereal's jaw. Dissent gritted his teeth against the pressure of a thousand punches against his one. On and on his fist went, closer...closer. But he couldn't...quite...reach.

Dissent growled low in his throat at the Sidereal's look of complacent glee...and his fingers spread wide, unleashing a hellish-green Crypt Bolt straight through the Starmetal Soul into the man's face.

Lingering Whisper flew backwards, going up and up until Dissent was satisfied the man would land outside of the Cynis grounds. The Abyssal fell to one knee and spat out blood. That Starmetal Soul really hurt. It was a good thing he used the strongest Crypt Bolt he could channel.

"Vira, go make sure he's dead," he said.

A moonsilver chain wrapped around his neck. For a horrific second, Dissent thought the Lunar actually had the nerve to kill him now while he was weak. It would have been a respectable death and one that would have improved his respect for her. Instead, the flame of unnatural Essence seared down the links of the metal and he gasped as he felt Ledaal Vira fade from his mind...only to be replaced by Heart-Wrought Silver's presence.

"You wouldn't let Mother Vira go," Heart-Wrought Silver groaned, sinking to the grass. Her body shuddered in agony. "And even with the Unquenchable Sovereignty Charm, I couldn't break your hold over her." 

"That's because Threefold Chaining of the Living is Void Circle Necromancy!" Dissent shouted. "It's impossible to break, you fool!"

"I couldn't break it...but I could move it." The Lunar curled into a tight ball of pain. Dissent watched, wondering if the Necromancy would kill her or not. Ordinarily, that's exactly what it was meant to do; rip the higher and lower souls out of a body and Chain them both along with the corpse. But the Lunar had only snared a third of the connection. He had no idea it was remotely possible so he certainly had no idea if she'd live.

"Why would you do this for me?" Ledaal Vira said, forcing her words into the auditory range for the Lunar. "You're an Anathema. Why would you take my slavery for your own, just to free me?"

"Because, Mother Vira. A long time ago, you helped a little slave girl who'd been victimized during the Carnival of Meeting. You're the one who found a way to get those shoes off of her and it's because of you that she was able to live long enough to be freed, to marry, and to live a grandmother now." Dissent watched the Lunar lying prone on the ground and he sat back on his heels to watch her. The speech exhausted her. He knew that because he could feel her in his mind now.

"I remember her," Vira said. "What was she to you?"

"She was my slave," Heart-Wrought Silver said sadly. "And my only friend when I was a happy little girl named Cynis Sari."

"You're Sari?" Ledaal Vira said, shocked. "You disappeared!"

"Least I could do...for a Monk who saved my best friend." Heart-Wrought Silver slumped to the grass and her presence diminished into an incoherent tangle of dreams in Dissent's mind. He watched her carefully but her life still burned inside of her. Apparently the Necromancy had decided not to kill her after all.

"Thanks for letting me do all the work," the Relentless Maiden said, savagely angry as she staggered in behind him. Her shoulder was split open and her left arm hung loosely at her side, the work of a grimcleaver by Dissent's guess. The Maiden's soulsteel mail was ragged and torn, her daiklave actually battered, but there was exultation in her eyes. The Dusk Caste still stood and the pile of bodies behind them attested to the effort that took.

"There was a Sidereal. I think I killed him." Dissent shrugged and coughed up blood. The Maiden ran a finger across the red stream from his mouth and licked it off her finger.

"You'll live."

"So will you," Dissent glowered. "Vira, go find out...Vira!"

Before his eyes, Ledaal Vira turned transparent. She was already dematerialized but she was...leaving. Actually leaving.

Dissent's heart was gripped by panic and he fell at her knees, trying to grasp her robe. Even with soulsteel hands, he couldn't touch her now. Black rage smothered the fear of loss, suppressed that weakness. She was just a possession, his most valued but nothing more.

"This is goodbye, my old student. Matthias." The radiant glow in her eyes covered up the sting of his forsaken name. "I can hear them, you know. I can hear Pasiap calling me home. His voice is so warm, so kindly. He loves us, Matthias. He loves all of us...even you. And He is not the only one."

"Vira..." Just saying her name was surprisingly difficult. She was really going...and Dissent couldn't let her. "You're the only part of who I was that I still want around. Don't go. I'll see you enthroned as one of the honored dead if you stay. Please." That last word almost didn't make it out of his mouth but he forced it. He'd lost all his power over her and, left with nothing else, all he had was honesty.

"Everything dies, Matthias," Vira said. Her voice was harder to hear now. "Because everything must begin again. I have a new life I'm going to, a life of love in the Light of the Immaculate Dragons. Come with me."

"I can't," he said bitterly. "I'm the Heretic for the rest of eternity, remember? Go and find your 'love' with your snakes. It'll last only until the Void tears the world apart! Go to the light, Vira. Because the next time you see the dark coming...you'll never see anything else ever again!"

Ledaal Vira flickered twice and then vanished entirely. Dissent felt the loss of his teacher as a keening pain quite apart from his wounds. He remained kneeling for a minute before he had the strength to rise again. The Relentless Maiden watched him. He met her eyes coldly.

"The First and Forsaken Lion taught you better," the Maiden said, contempt and incomprehension in her eyes. "She's just a ghost who lost her way. Let her go and get on with your mission."

"I'm going to. Alone."

"That's not what his Majesty ordered me to do," the Relentless Maiden of Unruly Pride and Roaring Fury said.

"I'm here to infiltrate the Realm, remember? I can't do that with a Dusk trailing me, especially after this. Our Neverborn Masters wanted this battle to happen, that's why They led me here. But even if we kill every person in this town, news will get out. I need to travel fast and undetected now and I need you to lay a false trail away from me."

"That makes tactical sense," the Maiden said. "Don't get sloppy, Fervent Dissent. You're down to yourself and your Hungry Ghost. I'm glad you don't have the distraction of that...slave of yours anymore. Do what you've been ordered to and I...will do the same." She lifted her daiklave up. It wasn't a salute but it was something.

"Be careful," Dissent said.

She only gave him a look of contempt and disgust as she trotted off. Dissent remembered the first time they met, down in the Southern deserts in a campaign against a fortified town. Even then, she seemed colder than any mortal he'd ever met. Now...there was nothing human left inside the admittedly voluptuous body. No matter how she looked, the Relentless Maiden was nothing more than an instrument of destruction. Unless those rumors of her discreet lusts were true.

"_**Are you done with this nonsense now**_?"

Fervent Dissent sighed as the Dusk disappeared from view and he turned to his Hungry Ghost. The Princess Magnificent with Lips of Coral and Robes of Black Feathers shed the appearance of his bodyguard and resumed her rightful form and station. Her porcelain-pale face was veiled in a light green veil, surprisingly similar in color and design to Heart-Wrought Silver's, if not for the transparency. A cloak made from moving raiton feathers stirred about her and she drifted an inch above the ground, seemingly suspended in the air by her robes. A giant umbrella of soulsteel and skin spun out behind her, tiny bells spinning and ringing as she twirled it. Their sound could drive anyone mad...if she chose to.

The Princess Magnificent's eyes were the lustrous green of perfect jade. Black specks crisscrossed their surface like a lattice. Right now, they were filled with more rage and fury than he had ever seen from her.

"Princess," he said, bowing his head and painfully lowering himself to one knee. "The Wyld Hunt is dead, the Relentless Maiden of Unruly Pride and Roaring Fury is gone, and you are free. What do you wish of your servant now?"

"_**A stomach for finality**_," she said, still angry. "_**Why is the Lunar still alive**_?"

"I'm not sure, honestly." He looked at the sleeping form of his wife. "Threefold Chaining of the Living should have killed her. Either way, she's in my head now." He tapped the side of his head. "If not in life, she'll serve me in death no matter what now."

"_**Then kill her and be done with it**_."

"I'm not ready to yet." Dissent stood, against his pain and the astonished rage of the defied Deathlord. "I did what you asked, Princess. I demanded your freedom from He Who Holds in Thrall Himself and He granted it. The First and Forsaken Lion's power over you is gone, Princess. You can build whatever armies you see fit, reconquer Great Forks, do whatever you want."

"_**What I want is for you to fulfill your Destiny**_!" she hissed. Her head cocked to the side and her neck snapped from the impossible motion. She did not seem the least bit bothered by it. "_**I sacrificed much to create you, Fulcrum Hammer. Now do your duty**_."

"I'm going to," he said, getting angry himself now. "I'm heading right now for the Imperial City. I'm going to take the hearthstone from the Scarlet Empress and turn Creation's Defenses against itself. The Void will get Creation soon enough."

"_**Kill her**_!" the Princess Magnificent demanded.

_**Kill her**_! the Whispers demanded as well. The chorus of voices between them made him dizzy.

"She's more useful to me alive!" Dissent said. The Whispers silenced and the Princess just stared at him. "I can use her and the knowledge of Heaven she has. She was trained in Yu-Shan! She must know many things I don't!"

"_**Of course she was**_." The Princess looked down at the unconscious Lunar with unmitigated hate. "_**She's always been trained there. The Golden Dragon was, even during the Primordial War**_."

"I never used that name around you," Dissent said warily. Suspicion and alarm vied for his attention and he ignored both feelings. He didn't have enough information to feed either. "How do you know she's the Golden Dragon?"

"_**Because...the last time I saw her...I strangled her to death**_." The Princess Magnificent at last looked away from Heart-Wrought Silver. "_**Because she betrayed ME**_!"

Fervent Dissent's eyes went wide with disbelief. The snow-like purity of the Princess Skin suddenly tanned, her hair darkening, and the veil disappeared in his mind. At last, he recognized the face of the woman he'd known so long. It was a reflection of one he saw in his dreams...one he'd once worn.

"No...that's not possible..." Dissent backed away from her. "You can't be..."

"_**Can't be what**_?" She rose up, her tiny hands lifting the Umbrella of Discord, and the sky turned black in an instant. Darkness fell on them both, darker than a moonless night. "_**The Deathlords come from somewhere, Dissent. We all do. And some of us remember very well those who betrayed us, those whose treachery is so great that they are not worthy of the Void but instead a cycle of pain, torment and death over and over until Creation dies**_!"

"You're Taking Chances?"

"_**Never call me that**_!" she shrieked. Dissent groaned as her voice spread hundreds of tiny cuts across his body, right through the Lion's royal robes. "_**I am the Princess Magnificent! And I will not tolerate weakness in you! Kill her**_!"

Something did not fit together. He missed something. She was far too angry for the situation. No matter her behavior now that she was free, Dissent had watched her for years. Something else was going on. What was it?

Anger can be a reaction to love and fear; he knew that from the Immaculate Teachings. Worthless as the religion was, some of its knowledge was still useful and he applied it. Was she in love? Unlikely. Was she afraid?

Yes. That was it. Dissent studied her carefully, recognizing now the fine lines of tension around her chin and mouth. The Princess Magnificent was angry but she was far more terrified. He'd never seen fear like that before. He was pretty sure he'd never felt it either. Why was she so afraid of an unconscious Lunar? Why did a woman who couldn't hurt her frighten her?

...or could she?

"Talespinner," he said. The Princess flinched at the name and Dissent had his proof. "This is what he discovered, isn't it? Every Deathlord has a weakness, one perfect way to destroy them irrevocably. The fear of it drove you from your shadowland because you believed they knew it...and had it."

"_**Kill her or I will**_!" the Princess Magnificient demanded.

"No, you won't." Dissent put his hands on his hips and looked down at the Deathlord, the woman who instructed him in dozens of spells and necromancies, who filled his head with his destiny, and had controlled the direction of his life since he was a teen. "If you could, she'd be dead right now. You're afraid to even touch her. What's the weakness? Her tears? Her love? Her skin?"

"_**I could still kill you, Dissent**_," she said. Coldness crept into her voice and the grass around her wilted on the blade from the sound of it. "_**I have no fear of you**_."

"What, and ruin the precious Fulcrum Hammer prophecy?" Dissent laughed, showing his contempt. Once he'd loved and respected this woman, or as close to it as he could come. But then she'd made him into the Abyssal he was today and that creature was just as incapable of showing compassion as she was. "You need me, Princess. You won't throw away centuries of work because I won't kill my wife."

"_**That treasonous creature is NOT your wife**_."

"She's not yours either!" Dissent snapped. "Stop acting like she is. I have the Resplendent Hammer of Execution now, remember? It's my Anima, not yours. I'm who and what she's married to, not the dead soul of a woman too stubborn to get the idea when Heaven killed her 1500 years ago!" New anger, surprisingly sharp and hot, flowed from somewhere inside. No matter how much distance he'd put between himself and his Immaculate origins, discovering that the Princess Magnificent was one of the reasons the Dragonblooded threw the Solar down killed the last vestige of sympathy for her. Creation made him a monster. She'd chosen to be one.

"_**You have made your choice**_," the Princess Magnificent said in a bitter voice. "_**Even free, I find myself constrained. Very well. Remember your duty, Fulcrum Hammer. Remember your Destiny. Remember it...because there is no other choice for you. There never has been**_."

The Deathlord's robes and cloak fluttered and then she fanned her Umbrella of Discord. A sudden, biting cold wind snatched her right off the ground. She was a dot within seconds and out of sight seconds later. Dissent watched her go and then looked down at Heart-Wrought Silver.

"I defied a Deathlord and the Neverborn for you. Why? What are you, that you can make me feel this way?" He kneeled next to her and caressed her cheek. Even asleep, she flinched at the touch of cold soulsteel against her skin. Fresh hate blossomed inside of the Abyssal. "So I'm a fool, after all. I saved you for nothing. You took Vira away from me and I saved you...for nothing!"

Dissent slammed a fist into the ground. The grass wilted and died on impact, and a slowly spreading creep of death spread out around him. The Whispery mocking of the Neverborn wound its way through his Enthralled Chains to torment his thoughts. The Princess Magnificent hated the Golden Dragon because she'd once loved him when she was a Night Caste named Taking Chances. Dissent couldn't deny that he hated this woman...but how much of that was genuine? How much of that was anger to conceal how much he cared for and admired her? Heart-Wrought Silver had done a selfless act that promised eternal torture, all to save a dead woman she barely knew. Somewhere inside of him, the bleeding remains of a priest once named Mnemon Matthias saw that...and loved her for it.

The Abyssal lifted his Lunar wife and carried her from the Cynis grounds. Before he reached the border of the property, he wrapped layers of warding and concealing Charms about them until not even the rocks in the walls knew what it was that tread on them. Without sound or notice, Fervent Dissent of the Grave's Embrace left the resort town of Lonesome Thought behind.

He put Heart-Wrought Silver in the woods outside. The veiled Sorcerer's dreams were terrible, wicked scenes of torture and pain, no doubt an expression of the Necromancy that now chained her soul. Dissent could feel his hold on her as he watched her sleep. Could he command her? He didn't know.

If you don't kill her now, she'll die when you destroy the world. The Whispers hurt his head with Their words. Kill her, that you may love her ghost before the End.

Fervent Dissent snorted at the thought as he left her there and set out toward the Imperial City. The Neverborn speaking of love...preposterous, as preposterous as it was for an Abyssal to think about it. Perhaps it was weakness that stayed his hand, weakness that made him miss Ledaal Vira. In the end, his sentiments were irrelevant, weren't they?

_The Prophecy of the Fulcrum Hammer._

_Dragon's byblow by a blow,_

_Honor, disgrace and depravity and discontent,_

_War he will bring, against the Pivot Child he stands._

_Before him life falters, green dies, color fades,_

_With hands that scream, he will bring forth screams,_

_And through them, destine all of Creation to die. _

_A Hinge of the world, upon him fate turns,_

_To light or the darkness he'll deliver existence,_

_But for him, the choice is already made._

He was the other Hinge of the world, next to the Pivot Child the Neverborn Whispered to him about. Dissent had his screaming hands that brought forth screams. As soon as he laid them on the Scarlet Empress, all of Creation would die and Heart-Wrought Silver with it. He didn't really want to destroy the world, when it really came down to it. But he was the Fulcrum Hammer, like the Prophecy said.

For him, the choice was already made.


End file.
